“You live in the country, of course?”
“In London: I am working with Mr. Oberzohn.”
“So: he is a good fellow. A gentleman.”
She had not been very greatly impressed by the doctor’s breeding, but it was satisfying to hear a stranger speak with such heartiness of her new employer. Her mind at the moment was on Heavytree Farm: the cool parlour with its chintzes—a room, at this hour, fragrant with the night scents of flowers which came stealing through the open casement. There was a fox-terrier, Jim by name, who would be wandering disconsolately from room to room, sniffing unhappily at the hall door. A lump came up into her throat. She felt very far from home and very lonely. She wanted to get up and run back to where she had left Joan and tell her that she had changed her mind and must go back to Gloucester that night … she looked impatiently for the waiter. Mr. Gurther was fiddling with some straws he had taken from the glass container in the centre of the table. One end of the straws showed above the edge of the table, the others were thrust deep in the wide-necked little bottle he had in the other hand. The hollow straws held half an inch of the red powder that filled the bottle.
“Excuse!”
The waiter put the orangeades on the table and went away to get change. Mirabelle’s eyes were wistfully fixed on a little door at the end of the room. It gave to the street, and there were taxicabs which could get her to Paddington in ten minutes.
When she looked round he was stirring the amber contents of her glass with a spoon. Two straws were invitingly protruding from the foaming orangeade. She smiled and lifted the glass as he fitted a cigarette into his long black holder.
“I may smoke—yes?”
The first taste she had through the straws was one of extreme bitterness. She made a wry face and put down the glass.
“How horrid!”
“Did it taste badly … ?” he began, but she was pouring out water from a bottle.
“It was most unpleasant—”
“Will you try mine, please?” He offered the glass to her and she drank. “It may have been something in the straw.” Here he was telling her the fact.
“It was …”
The room was going round and round, the floor rising up and down like the deck of a ship in a stormy sea. She rose, swayed, and caught him by the arm.
“Open the little door, waiter, please—the lady is faint.”
The waiter turned to the door and threw it open. A man stood there—just outside the door. He wore over his dinner dress a long cloak in the Spanish style. Gurther stood staring, a picture of amused dismay, his cigarette still unlit. He did not move his hands. Gonsalez was waiting there, alert … death grinning at him … and then the room went inky black. Somebody had turned the main switch.
X
When the Lights Went Out
Five, ten minutes passed before the hall-keeper tripped and stumbled and cursed his way to the smaller room and, smashing down the hired flowers, he passed through the wreckage of earthen pots and tumbled mould to the control. Another second and the rooms were brilliantly lit again—the band struck up a two-step and fainting ladies were escorted to the decent obscurity of their retiring rooms.
The manager of the hall came flying into the annexe.
“What happened—main fuse gone?”
“No,” said the hall-keeper sourly, “some fool turned over the switch.”
The agitated waiter protested that nobody had been near the switch-box.
“There was a lady and gentleman here, and another gentleman outside.” He pointed to the open door.
“Where are they now?”
“I don’t know. The lady was faint.”
The three had disappeared when the manager went out into a small courtyard that led round the corner of the building to a side street. Then he came back on a tour of inspection.
“Somebody did it from the yard. There’s a window open—you can reach the switch easily.”
The window was fastened and locked.
“There is no lady or gentleman in the yard,” he said. “Are you sure they did not go into the big hall?”
“In the dark—maybe.”
The waiter’s nervousness was understandable. Mr. Gurther had given him a five-pound note and the man had not as yet delivered the change. Never would he return to claim it if all that his keen ears heard was true.
Four men had appeared in the annexe: one shut the door and stood by it. The three others were accompanied by the manager, who called Phillips, the waiter.
“This man served them,” he said, troubled. Even the most innocent do not like police visitations. “What was the gentleman like?”
Phillips gave a brief and not inaccurate description.
“That is your man, I think, Herr Fluen?”
The third of the party was bearded and plump; he wore a Derby hat with evening dress.
“That is Gurther,” he nodded. “It will be a great pleasure to meet him. For eight months the Embassy has been striving for his extradition. But our people at home … !”
He shrugged his shoulders. All properly constituted officials behave in such a manner when they talk of governments.
“The lady now”—Inspector Meadows was patently worried—“she was faint, you say. Had she drunk anything?”
“Orangeade—there is the glass. She said there was something nasty in the straws. These.”
Phillips handed them to the detective. He wetted his finger from them, touched his tongue and spat out quickly.
“Yes,” he said, and went out by the little door.
Gonsalez, of course: but where had he gone, and how, with a drugged girl on his hands and the Child of the Snake? Gurther was immensely quick to strike, and an icy-hearted man: the presence of a woman would not save Leon.
“When the light
