"Miss Mackwayte telephoned to ask if I could go and see, her," said the Chief to Desmond as they motored back to White hall, Marigold gave me the message just as we were coming out. She asked if I could come this afternoon. I'm going to send you in my place, Okewood. I've got a conference with the head of the French Intelligence at three, and the Lord knows when I shall get away. I've a notion that you and Miss Mackwayte will work very well together."
"Certainly," said Desmond, "she struck me as being a very charming and clever girl. Now I know the source of your information about my movements last night!"
"That you certainly don't!" answered the Chief promptly, " if I thought you did Duff and No.39 should be sacked on the spot!"
"Then it wasn't Miss Mackwayte who told you?"
"I haven't seen or heard from Miss Mackwayte since she left my office yesterday evening. You were followed!"
"But why?"
"I'll tell you all about it at, lunch!"
Bated once more, Desmond retired into his shell. By this he was convinced of the utter impossibility of making the Chief vouchsafe any information except voluntarily.
Mr. Marigold had evidently announced their coming to Scotland Yard, for a very urbane and delightful official met them at the entrance and conducted them to a room where the prisoner was already awaiting them in charge of a plain clothes man. There the official excused himself and retired, leaving them alone with the prisoner and his escort.
Barney proved to be a squat, podgy, middle-aged Jew of the familiar East End Polish or Russian type. He had little black beady eyes, a round fat white face, and a broad squabby Mongol nose. His clothes were exceedingly seedy, and the police had confiscated his collar and tie. This absence of neckwear, coupled with the fact that the lower part of his face was sprouting with a heavy growth of beard, gave him a peculiarly villainous appearance:
He was seated on a chair, his head sunk on his breast. His eyes were hollow, and his face overspread with a horrible sickly greenish pallor, the hue of the last stage of fear. His hands, resting on his knees, twisted and fiddled continually. Every now and then convulsive shudders shook him. The man was quite obviously on the verge of a collapse.
As the Chief and Desmond advanced into the room, the Jew looked up in panic. Then he sprang to his feet with a scream and flung himself on his knees, crying:
"Ah, no! Don't take me away! I ain't done no 'arm, gentlemen! S'welp me, gentlemen, I ain't a murderer! I swear..."
"Get him up!" said the Chief in disgust, "and, look here, can't you give him a drink? I want to speak to him. He's not fit to talk rationally in this state!"
The detective pushed a bell in the wall, a policeman answered it, and presently the prisoner was handed a stiff glass of whiskey and water.
After Barney had swallowed it, the Chief said:
"Now, look here, my man, I want you to tell me exactly what happened last night. No fairy tales, remember! I know what you told the police, and if I catch you spinning me any yarns on to it, well, it'll only be the worse for you. I don't mind telling you, you're in a pretty bad mess!"
The prisoner put down the glass wearily and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. Though the room was bitterly cold, the perspiration stood out in beads on his brow.
"I have told the trewth, sir," he said hoarsely, "and it goes against me, don't it? Hafen't I not gif myself op to the policeman? Couldn't I not haf drop the svag and ron away? For sure! And vy didn't I not do it? For vy, because of vot I seen in that house. I've 'ad my bit of trobble mit the police and vy should I tell them how I vos op to a game last night if I vas not a-telling the trewth, eh! I've been on the crook, gentlemen, I say it, ja, but I ain't no murderer, God choke me I ain't!
"I've earned gut monney in my time on the 'alls but life is very 'ardt, and I've been alvays hongry these days. Yesterday I meet old Mac wot I used to meet about the 'alls I vos workin' along o' my boss... at the agent's it vos were I vos lookin' for a shop! The perfesh always makes a splash about its salaries, gentlemen, and Mac 'e vos telling me vot a lot o' monney he make on the Samuel Circuit and 'ow 'e 'ad it at home all ready to put into var savings certif'kits. I never done a job like this von before, gentlemen, but I vos hardt pushed for money, s'welp me I vos!
"I left it till late last night because of these air raids... I vanted to be sure that ole Mac and 'is daughter should be asleep. I god in from the back of the louse, oi, oi, bot it vos dead easy! through the scollery vindow. I cleared op a bagful of stuff in the dining-room... there vosn't, anything vorth snatching outer the parlor... and sixty-five quid out of an old cigar-box in the desk. The police 'as got it... I give it all back! I say I haf stolen, but murder? No!" He paused.
"Go on," said the Chief.
The prisoner looked about him in a frightened way.
"I vos jus' thinking I had better be getting avay, he continued in his hoarse, gutteral voice, 'ven snick.!... I hears a key in the front door. I vos, standing by the staircase... I had no time to get out by the vay I had kom so I vent opstairs to the landing vere there vos a curtain. I shlip behind the curtain and vait! I dare not look out but I listen, I listen.. I hear some one go into the dining-room and move about. I open the curtain a little way... so!... because I think I vill shlip downstairs vile the other party is in the dining-room... and there I sees ole Mac in his dressing-gown just coming down from the first floor. The same moment I hear a step in the front hall.
"I see ole Mac start but he does not stop. He kom right downstairs, and I step back behind the curtain ontil I find a door vich I push. I dare not svitch on my light but presently I feel the cold edge of a bath with my hands. I stay there and vait. Oi, oi, oi, how shall you belief vot I tell?"
He broke off trembling.
"Go on, Barney," said the detective, "can't you see the gentlemen are waiting?"
The Jew resumed, his voice sinking almost to a whisper.
"It vos quite dark behind the curtain but from the bathroom, through the open door, I could just see ole Mac standing with his back to me, a-holding the curtain. He must haf shlip in there to watch the other who vos komming opstairs. Then... then... I hear a step on the stair... a little, soft step... then ole Mac he open the curtain and cry 'Who are you?' Bang! the... the... other on the stairs he fire a shot. I see the red flash and I smell the... the powder not? The other, he does not vait... he just go on opstairs and ole Mac is lying there on his back with the blood a-trickling out on the oil-cloth. And I, vith my bag on my back, I creep downstair and out by the back again, and I ron and ron and then I valks. Gott! how I haf walked! I vos so frightened! And then, at last, I go to a policeman and gif 'myself op!"
Barney stopped. The tears burst from his eyes and laying his grimy face on his arm, he sobbed.
The detective patted him on the back.
"Pull yourself together, man!" he said encouragingly.
"This man on the stairs," queried the Chief, "did you see him?"
"Ach was!" replied the prisoner, turning a tearstained face towards him, "I haf seen nothing, except old Mac's back vich vos right in vront of me, it vos so dark!"
"But couldn't you see the other person at all, not even the outline" persisted the Chief.
The prisoner made a gesture of despair.
"It vos so dark, I say! Nothing haf I seen! I haf heard only his step!"
"What sort of step I Pas it heavy or light or what? Did this person seem in a hurry?"
"A little light tread... so! won, two! won, two! , and qvick like 'e think 'e sneak opstairs vithout nobody seeing!"
"Did he make much noise"
"Ach was! hardly at all... the tread, 'e vos so light like a woman's..."
"Like a woman's, eh!", repeated the Chief, as if talking to himself, "Why do you think that?"
"Because for vy it vos so gentle! The' staircase, she haf not sqveak as she haf sqveak when I haf creep away!"
The Chief turned to the plain clothes man.
"You can take him away now, officer," he said.
Barney sprang up trembling.
"Not back to the cell," he cried imploringly, "I cannot be alone. Oh, gentlemen, you vill speak for me! I haf not had trobble vith the police this long time! My vife's cousin, he is an elder of the Shool he vill tell you 'ow poor ve haf been..."
But the Chief crossed the room to the door rind the detective hustled the prisoner away,
Then the official whom they had seen before came in.
"Glad I caught you," he said. "I thought you would care to see the post mortem report. The doctor has just handed it in."
The chief waved him off.
"I don't think there's any doubt about the cause of death," he replied, "we saw the body ourselves..."
"Quite so," replied the other, "but there is something interesting about this report all the, same. They were able to extract the bullet!"
"Oh," said the Chief, "that ought to tell us something!"
"It does," answered the official. "We've submitted it to our small arms expert, and he pronounces it to be a bullet fired by an automatic pistol of unusually large calibre."
The Chief looked at Desmond.
"You were right there," he said.
"And," the official went on, "our man says, further, that, as far as he knows, there is only one type of automatic pistol that fires a bullet as big as this one!"
"And that is?" asked the Chief.
"An improved pattern of the German Mauser pistol," was the other's startling reply.
The Chief tapped a cigarette meditatively on the back of his hand.
"Okewood," he said, "you are the very model of discretion. I have put your reticence to a pretty severe test this morning, and you have stood it very well. But I can see that you are bristling with questions like a porcupine with quills. Zero hour has arrived. You may fire away!"
They were sitting in the smoking-room of the United Service Club. "The Senior," as men call it, is the very parliament of Britain's professional navy and army. Even in these days when war has flung wide the portals of the two services to all-comers, it retains a touch of rigidity. Famous generals and admirals look down from the lofty walls in silent testimony of wars that have been. Of the war that is, you will hear in every cluster of men round the little tables. Every day in the hour after luncheon battles are fought over again, personalities criticized, and decisions weighed with all the vigorous freedom of ward-room or the mess ante-room.
And so to-day, as he sat in his padded leather chair, surveying the Chief's quizzing face across the little table where their coffee was steaming, Desmond felt the oddness of the contrast between the direct, matter-of-fact personalities all around them, and the extraordinary web of intrigue which seemed to have spun itself round the little house at Seven Kings.
Before he answered the Chief's question, he studied him for a moment under cover of lighting a cigarette. How very little, to be sure, escaped that swift and silent mind! At luncheon the Chief had scrupulously avoided making, the slightest allusion to the thoughts with which Desmond's mind was seething. Instead he had told, with the gusto of the born raconteur, a string of extremely droll yarns about "double crosses," that is, obliging gentlemen who will spy for both sides simultaneously, he had come into contact with during his long and varied career. Desmond had played up to him and repressed the questions which kept rising to his lips. Hence the Chief's unexpected tribute to him in the smoking room,
"Well," said Desmond slowly, "there are one or two things I should like to know. What am I here for? Why did you have me followed last night? How did you know, before we ever went to Seven Kings, that Barney did not murder old Mackwayte? And lastly..."
He paused, fearing to be rash; then he risked it:
"And lastly, Nur-el-Din?"
The Chief leant back in his chair and laughed.
"I'm sure you feel much better now," he said. Then his face grew grave and he added:
"Your last question answers all the others!"
"Meaning Nur-el-Din?" asked Desmond.
The Chief nodded.
"Nur-el-Din," he repeated. "That's why you're here, that's why I had you followed last night, that's why I..." he hesitated for the word, "let's say, presumed (one knows for certain so little in our work) that our friend Barney had nothing to do with the violent death of poor old Mackwayte. Nur-el-Din in the center, the kernel, the hub of everything!"
The Chief leant across the table and Desmond pulled his chair closer.
"There's only one other man in the world can handle this job, except you," he began, "and that's your brother Francis. Do you know where he is, Okewood?"
"He wrote to me last from Athens," answered Desmond, "but that must be nearly two months ago."
The Chief laughed.
"His present address is not Athens," he said, "if you want to know, he's serving on a German Staff somewhere at the back of Jerusalem the Golden. Frankly, I know you don't care about our work, and I did my best to get your brother. He has had his instructions and as soon as he can get away he will. That was not soon enough for me. It had to be him or you. So I sent for you."
He stopped and cleared his throat. Desmond stared at him. He could hardly believe his eyes. This quiet, deliberate man was actually embarrassed.
"Okewood," the Chief went on, "you know I like plain speaking, and therefore you won't make the mistake of thinking I'm trying to flatter you."
Desmond made a gesture.
"Wait a moment and hear me out," the Chief went on. "What is required for this job is a man of great courage and steady nerve. Yes, we have plenty of fellows like that. But the man I am looking for must, in addition to possessing those qualities, know German and the Germans thoroughly, and when I say thoroughly I mean to the very core so that, if needs be, he may be a German, think German, act German. I have men in my service who know German perfectly and can get themselves up to look the part to the life. But they have never been put to the real, the searching test. Not one of them has done what you and your brother successfully accomplished. The first time I came across you, you had just come out of Germany after fetching your brother away. To have lived for weeks in Germany in wartime and to have got clear away is a feat which shows that both you and he can be trusted to make a success of one of the most difficult and critical missions I have ever had to propose. Francis is not here. That's why I want you."
The Chief paused as if weighing something in his mind.
"It's not the custom of either service, Okewood," he said, "to send a man to certain death. You're not in this creepy, crawly business of ours. You're a pukka soldier and keen on your job. So I want you to know that you are free to turn down this offer of mine here and now, and go back to France without my thinking a bit the worse of you."
"Would you tell me something about it?" asked Desmond.
"I'm sorry I can't," replied the other. "There must be only two men in this secret, myself and the fellow who undertakes the mission. Of course, it's not certain death. If you take this thing on, you'll have a sporting chance for your life, but that's all. It's going to be a desperate game played against a desperate opponent. Now do you understand why I didn't want you to think I was flattering you? You've got your head screwed on right, I know, but I should hate to feel afterwards, if anything went wrong, that you thought I had buttered you up in order to entice you into taking the job on!"
Desmond took two or three deep puffs of his cigarette and dropped it into the ash-tray.
"I'll see you!" he said.
The Chief grinned with delight.
"By Jove!" he exclaimed, "I knew you were my man!"