Works of Sax Rohmer, page 48
Harborne, who had been pursuing these reflections whilst, within sight of No. 70A, he stood slowly loading his pipe, paused, pouch in hand. On one memorable occasion, the super-subtlety of Sheffield (who was tainted with French heresies) had led to a fiasco which had made them the laughing-stock of Scotland Yard. Harborne felt in his breast pocket, where there reposed a copy of the warrant for the arrest of Séverac Bablon. And before he withdrew his hand his mind was made up. He was a man of indomitable pluck.
Walking briskly to the gate in the high wall, he opened it, passed around a very neat little lawn, and stood in the porch of 70A. As he glanced about for bell or knocker, and failed to find either, the door was opened quietly by a tall man in black — an Arab.
“I have important business with Mr. Sanrack,” said Harborne quietly, and handed the Arab a card which simply bore the name: “Mr. Goodson.”
“He is not at home, but expected,” replied the man, in guttural English. “Will Mr. Goodson await?”
“Yes,” said Harborne, “if Mr. Sanrack won’t be long.”
The Arab bowed, and conducted him to a small but cosy room, furnished simply but with great good taste — and withdrew. Harborne congratulated himself. The simple and direct, if old-fashioned, methods were, after all, the best.
It was a very silent house. That fact struck him at once. Listen intently as he would, no sound from within could he detect. What should be his next move?
He stepped to the door and looked out into the hall. This was rather narrow, and, owing to the presence of heavy Oriental drapings, very dark. It would suit his purpose admirably. Directly “Mr. Sanrack” came in he would spring upon him and get the handcuffs fast, then he could throw open the front door, if there had been time for anyone to reclose it, and summon assistance with his whistle.
He himself must effect the actual arrest — single-handed. He cared nothing who came upon the scene after that. He placed the handcuffs in a more convenient pocket, and buttoned up his double-breasted blue serge coat.
Sheffield was certain to be Superintendent before long; and it only required one other big case, such as this, to insure Harborne’s succession to an Inspectorship. From thence to the office vacated by Sheffield was an easy step for a competent and ambitious man.
How silent the house was!
Harborne glanced at his watch. He had been waiting nearly five minutes. Scarce another two had elapsed — when a brisk step sounded on the gravel. The detective braced himself for a spring. Would he have the Arab to contend with too?
No. A key was slipped into the well-oiled lock. The door opened.
With something of the irresistible force of a charging bull, Detective-Sergeant Harborne hurled himself upon his man.
Human strength had been useless to oppose that attack; but by subtlety it was frustrated. The man stepped agilely aside — and Harborne reclosed the door with his head! That his skull withstood that crashing blow was miraculous; but he was of tough stock. Perhaps the ruling passion helped him, for dazed and dizzy as he was, he did the right thing when his cunning opponent leapt upon him from behind.
He threw his hands above his shoulders and grasped the man round the neck — then — slowly — shakily — his head swimming and the world a huge teetotum — he rose upon his knees. Bent well forward, he rose to his feet. The other choked, swore, struck useless blows, but hung limply, helpless, in that bear-like, awful grip.
At the exact moment — no second too soon, no second too late — down went Harborne’s right hand to the wriggling, kicking, right foot of the man upon whom he had secured that dreadful hold. A bend forward — a turn of the hip — and his man fell crashing to the floor.
“That’s called the Cornish grip!” panted the detective, dropping all his heaviness upon the recumbent form.
Click! Click!
The handcuffed man wriggled into a sitting posture.
“You goddarned son of a skunk!” he gurgled — and stopped short — sat, white-faced, manacled, looking up at his captor.
“Jumpin’ Jenkins!” he whispered— “it’s that plug-headed guy, Harborne!”
“Alden!” cried Harborne. “Alden! What the —— !”
“Same to you!” snarled the Agency man. “Call yourself a detective! I reckon you’d make a better show as a coal-heaver!”
When conversation — if not civil conversation, at least conversation which did not wholly consist in mutual insult — became possible, the two in that silent hall compared notes.
“Where in the name of wonder did you get the key?” demanded Harborne.
“House agent!” snapped the other. “I work on the lines that I’m after a clever man, not trying to round up a herd of bullocks!”
Revolvers in readiness, they searched the house. No living thing was to be found. Only one room was unfurnished. It opened off the hall, and was on a lower level. The floor was paved and the walls plastered. An unglazed window opened on a garden, and a deep recess opposite to the door held only shadows and emptiness.
“It’s a darned pie-trap!” muttered Mr. Aloys. X. Alden. “And you and me are the pies properly!”
“But d’you mean to say he’s going to leave all this furniture —— !”
“Hired!” snapped the American. “Hired! I knew that before I came!”
Detective-Sergeant Harborne raised a hand to his throbbing head — and sank dizzily into a cushioned hall-seat.
CHAPTER XXVIII
AT THE PALACE — AND LATER
How self-centred is man, and how darkly do his own petty interests overshadow the giant things of life. Thrones may totter and fall, monarchs pass to the limbo of memories, whilst we wrestle with an intractable collar-stud. Had another than Inspector Sheffield been driving to Buckingham Palace that day, he might have found his soul attuned to the martial tone about him; for “War! War!” glared from countless placards, and was cried aloud by countless newsboys. War was in the air. Nothing else, it seemed, was thought of, spoken of, sung of.
But Sheffield at that time was quite impervious to the subtle influences which had inspired music-hall song writers to pour forth patriotic lyrics; which had adorned the button-holes of sober citizens with miniature Union Jacks. For him the question of the hour was: “Shall I capture Séverac Bablon?”
He reviewed, in the space of a few seconds, the whole bewildering case, from the time when this incomprehensible man had robbed Park Lane to scatter wealth broadcast upon the Embankment up to the present moment when, it would appear, having acted as best man at a Society wedding, he now was within the precincts of Buckingham Palace.
It was the boast of Séverac Bablon, as Sheffield knew, that no door was closed to him. Perhaps that boast was no idle one. Who was Séverac Bablon? Inspector Sheffield, who had asked himself that question many months before, when he stood in the British Museum before the empty pedestal which once had held the world-famed head of Cæsar, asked it again now. Alas! it was a question to which he had no answer.
The cab stopped in front of Buckingham Palace.
Sheffield paid the man and walked up to the gates. He was not unknown to those who sat in high places, having been chosen to command the secret bodyguard of Royalty during one protracted foreign tour. An unassuming man, few of his acquaintances, perhaps, knew that he shared with the Lord Mayor of London the privilege of demanding audience at any hour of the day or night.
It was a privilege which hitherto he had never exercised. He exercised it now.
Some five minutes later he found himself in an antechamber, and by the murmur of voices which proceeded from that direction he knew a draped curtain alone separated him from a hastily summoned conference. A smell of cigar smoke pervaded the apartment.
Suddenly, he became quite painfully nervous. Was it intended that he should hear so much? Short of pressing his fingers to his ears, he had no alternative.
“We had all along desired that amicable relations be maintained in this matter, Baron.”
That was the Marquess of Evershed. Sheffield knew his voice well.
“It has not appeared so from your attitude, Marquess!”
Whom could that be? Probably Baron Hecht.
“Your intense patriotism, your admirable love of country, Baron, has led you to misconstrue, as affronts, actions designed to promote our friendly relations.”
Only one man in England possessed the suave, polished delivery of the last speaker — the Right Honourable Walter Belford.
“I have misconstrued nothing; my instructions have been explicit.”
“Fortunately, no further occasion exists for you to carry them out.”
Sheffield knew that voice too.
“A Foreign Service Messenger, Mr. Maurice Anerly, left for my capital this morning — —”
“Captain Searles has been instructed to intercept him. His dispatch will not be delivered.”
Inspector Sheffield, who had been vainly endeavouring to become temporarily deaf, started. Whose voice was that? Could he trust his ears?
There followed the sound as of the clapping of hands upon someone’s shoulders.
“Baron Hecht, I hold a most sacred trust — the peace of nations. No one shall rob me of it. Believe me, your great master already is drafting a friendly letter — —”
The musical voice again, with that vibrant, forceful note.
“In short, Baron” (Sheffield tried not to hear; for he knew this voice too), “there is a power above the Eagle, a power above the Lion: the power of wealth! Lacking her for ally, no nation can war with another! The king of that power has spoken — and declared for peace! I am glad of it, and so, I know, are you!”
Following a short interval, a shaking of hands, as the unwilling eavesdropper divined. Then, by some other door, a number of people withdrew, amid a hum of seemingly friendly conversation.
A gentleman pulled the curtain aside.
“Come in, Sheffield!” he said genially.
Chief Inspector Sheffield bowed very low and entered a large room, which, save for the gentleman who had admitted him, now was occupied only by the Right Hon. Walter Belford, Home Secretary.
“How do you do, Inspector?” asked Mr. Belford affably.
“Thank you, sir,” replied the detective with diffidence; “I am quite well, and trust you are.”
“I think I know what has brought you here,” continued the Home Secretary. “You have been following — —”
“Séverac Bablon! Yes, sir!”
“As I supposed. Well, it will be expedient, Inspector, religiously to keep that name out of the Press in future! Furthermore — er — any warrant that may be in existence must be cancelled! This is a matter of policy, and I am sending the necessary instructions to the Criminal Investigation Department. In short — drop the case!”
Chief Inspector Sheffield looked rather dazed.
“No doubt, this is a surprise to you,” continued Mr. Belford; “but do not allow it to be a disappointment. Your tactful conduct of the case, and the delicate manner in which you have avoided compromising anyone — in which you have handicapped yourself, that others might not be implicated — has not been overlooked. Your future is assured, Inspector Sheffield.”
The gentleman who had admitted Sheffield had left the apartment almost immediately afterwards. Now he returned, and fastened a pin in the detective’s tie.
“By way of apology for spoiling your case, Sheffield!” he said.
What Sheffield said or did at that moment he could never afterwards remember. A faint recollection he had of muttering something about “Séverac Bablon —— !”
“Ssh!” Mr. Belford had replied. “There is no such person!”
It was at the moment of his leave-taking that his eyes were drawn to an ash-tray upon the big table. A long tongue of bluish-grey smoke licked the air, coiling sinuously upward from amid cigar ends and ashes. It seemingly possessed a peculiar and pungent perfume.
And it proceeded from the smouldering fragment of a yellow cigarette.
When Inspector Sheffield fully recovered his habitual composure and presence of mind, he found himself proceeding along Piccadilly. War was in the breeze; War was on all the placards. Would-be warriors looked out from every club window. “Rule, Britannia” rang out from every street organ.
Then came running a hoarse newsboy, aproned with a purple contents-bill, a bundle of Gleaners under his arm. His stock was becoming depleted at record speed. He could scarce pass the sheets and grab the halfpence rapidly enough.
For where all else spoke of war, his bill read and his blatant voice proclaimed:
“Peace! Official!”
Again the power of the Seal had been exercised in the interests of the many, although popularly it was believed, and maintained, that Britain’s huge, efficient, and ever-growing air-fleet contributed not a little to this peaceful conclusion.
The Gleaner assured its many readers that such was indeed the case. To what extent the Gleaner spoke truly, and to what extent its statements were inspired, you are as well equipped to judge as I.
And unless some future day shall free my pen, I have little more to tell you of Séverac Bablon. Officially, as the Holder of the Seal, his work, at any rate for the time, in England was done. Some day, Sheard may carry his history farther, and he would probably begin where I leave off.
This, then, will be at a certain pier-head, on a summer’s day, and at a time when, far out near the sky-line, grey shapes crept southward — battleships — the flying squadron which thirty-six hours earlier had proceeded to a neighbour’s water-gate to demonstrate that the command of the seas had not changed hands since the days of Nelson. The squadron was returning to home waters. It was a concrete message of peace, expressed in terms of war.
Nearer to the shore, indeed at no great distance from the pier-head, lay a white yacht, under steam. A launch left her side, swung around her stern, and headed for the pier.
In a lower gallery, shut off from the public promenades, where thousands of curious holiday-makers jostled one another for a sight of the great yacht, or for a glimpse of those about to join her, a tall man leaned upon the wooden rail and looked out to sea. A girl in while drill, whose pretty face was so pale that fashionable New York might have failed to recognise Zoe Oppner, the millionaire’s daughter, stood beside him.
“Though I have been wrong,” he said slowly, “in much that I have done, even you will agree that I have been right in this.”
He waved his hand towards the fast disappearing squadron.
“Even I?” said Zoe sharply.
“Even you. For only you have shown me my errors.”
“You admit, then, that your —— !”
“Robberies?”
“Not that, of course! But your — —”
“Outrages?”
“I did not mean that either. The means you have adopted have often been violent, though the end always was good. But no really useful reform can be brought about in such a way, I am sure.”
The man turned his face and fixed his luminous eyes upon hers.
“It may be so,” he said; “but even now I see no other way.”
Zoe pointed to the almost invisible battleships.
“Ah!” continued Séverac Bablon, “that was a problem of a different kind. In every civilised land there is a power above the throne. Do you think that, unaided, Prussia ever could have conquered gallant France? The people who owe allegiance to the German Emperor are a great people, but, in such an undertaking as war, without the aid of that people who owe allegiance to me, they are helpless as a group of children! Had I been in 1870 what I am to-day, the Prussian arms had never been carried into Paris!”
“You mean that a nation, to carry on a war, requires an enormous sum of money?”
“Which can only be obtained from certain sources.”
“From the Jews?”
“In part, at least. The finance of Europe is controlled by a group of Jewish houses.”
“But they are not all — —”
“Amenable to my orders? True. But the outrages with which you reproach me have served to show that when my orders are disobeyed I have power to enforce them! Where I am not respected I am feared. I refused my consent to the loan by aid of which Great Britain’s enemies had designed to prosecute a war against her. None of those theatrical displays with which sometimes I have impressed the errant vulgar were necessary. The greatest name in European finance was refused to the transaction — and the Great War died in the hour of its birth!”
His eyes gleamed with almost fanatic ardour.
“For this will be forgotten all my errors, and forgiven all my sins!”
“I am sure of that,” said Zoe earnestly. “But — whatever you came to do — —”
“I have not done — you would say? Only in part. Where I made my home in London, you have seen a curtained recess. It held the Emblem of my temporal power.”
He moved his hand, and the sunlight struck green beams from the bezel of the strange ring upon his finger. Zoe glanced at it with something that was almost like fear.
“This,” he said, replying, as was his uncanny custom to an unspoken question, “is but the sign whereby I may be known for the holder of that other Emblem. My house is empty now; the Emblem returns to the land where it was fashioned.”
“You are abandoning your projects — your mission? Why?”
“Perhaps because the sword is too heavy for the wielder. Perhaps because I am only a man — and lonely.”
The launch touched the pier, below them.
“You are the most loyal friend I have made in England — in Europe — in the world,” said Séverac Bablon. “Good-bye.”
Zoe was very pale.
“Do you mean — for — always?”
“When you have said ‘Good-bye’ to me I have nothing else to stay for.”
Zoe glanced at him once and looked away. Her charming face suddenly flushed rosily, and a breeze from the sea curtained the bright eyes with intractable curls.
“But if I won’t say ‘Good-bye’?” she whispered.
