Manfred stood in the sidewalk and signalled, and the little car came swiftly and noiselessly across. Leon’s eyes were on the entrance. A tall man standing in the shadow of the hall was watching. He was leaning against the wall in a negligent attitude, and for a second Leon was startled.
“Get in quickly!”
Leon almost shouted the words back, and Manfred jumped into the machine, as the chauffeur sent the car forward, with a jerk that strained every gear.
“What on—?” began Manfred, but the rest of his words were lost in the terrific crash which followed.
The leather hood of the machine was ripped down at the back, a splinter of glass struck Leon’s cap and sliced a half-moon neatly. He jammed on the brakes, threw open the door of the saloon and leaped out. Behind the car was a mass of wreckage; a great iron casting lay split into three pieces amidst a tangle of broken packing-case. Leon looked up; immediately above the entrance to Oberzohn & Smitts’ was a crane, which had swung out with a heavy load just before Manfred came out. The steel wire hung loosely from the derrick. He heard excited voices speaking from the open doorway three floors above, and two men in large glasses were looking down and gabbling in a language he did not understand.
“A very pretty accident. We might have filled half a column in the evening newspapers if we had not moved.”
“And the gentleman in the hall—what was he doing?”
Leon walked back through the entrance: the man had disappeared, but near where he had been standing was a small bell-push which, it was obvious, had recently been fixed, for the wires ran loosely on the surface of the wall and were new.
He came back in time to see a policeman crossing the road.
“I wish to find out how this accident occurred, constable,” he said. “My master was nearly killed.”
The policeman looked at the ton of debris lying half on the sidewalk, half on the road, then up at the slackened hawser.
“The cable has run off the drum, I should think.”
“I should think so,” said Leon gravely.
He did not wait for the policeman to finish his investigations, but went home at a steady pace, and made no reference to the “accident” until he had put away his car and had returned to Curzon Street.
“The man in the hall was put there to signal when you were under the load—certain things must not happen,” he said. “I am going out to make a few inquiries.”
Gonsalez knew one of Oberzohn’s staff: a clean young Swede, with that knowledge of English which is normal in Scandinavian countries; and at nine o’clock that night he drifted into a Swedish restaurant in Dean Street and found the young man at the end of his meal. It was an acquaintance—one of many—that Leon had assiduously cultivated. The young man, who knew him as Mr. Heinz—Leon spoke German remarkably well—was glad to have a companion with whom he could discuss the inexplicable accident of the afternoon.
“The cable was not fixed to the drum,” he said. “It might have been terrible: there was a gentleman in a motorcar outside, and he had only moved away a few inches when the case fell. There is bad luck in that house. I am glad that I am leaving at the end of the week.”
Leon had some important questions to put, but he did not hurry, having the gift of patience to a marked degree. It was nearly ten when they parted, and Gonsalez went back to his garage, where he spent a quarter of an hour.
At midnight, Manfred had just finished a long conversation with the Scotland Yard man who was still at Brightlingsea, when Leon came in, looking very pleased with himself. Poiccart had gone to bed, and Manfred had switched out one circuit of lights when his friend arrived.
“Thank you, my dear George,” said Gonsalez briskly. “It was very good of you, and I did not like troubling you, but—”
“It was a small thing,” said Manfred with a smile, “and involved merely the changing of my shoes. But why? I am not curious, but why did you wish me to telephone the night watchman at Oberzohn’s to be waiting at the door at eleven o’clock for a message from the doctor?”
“Because,” said Leon cheerfully, rubbing his hands, “the night watchman is an honest man; he has a wife and six children, and I was particularly wishful not to hurt anybody. The building doesn’t matter: it stands, or stood, isolated from all others. The only worry in my mind was the night watchman. He was at the door—I saw him.”
Manfred asked no further questions. Early the next morning he took up the paper and turned to the middle page, read the account of the “Big Fire in City Road” which had completely gutted the premises of Messrs. Oberzohn & Smitts; and, what is more, he expected to read it before he had seen the paper.
“Accidents are accidents,” said Leon the philosopher that morning at breakfast. “And that talk I had with the clerk last night told me a lot: Oberzohn has allowed his fire insurance to lapse!”
XVI
Rath Hall
In one of the forbidden rooms that was filled with the apparatus which Dr. Oberzohn had accumulated for his pleasure and benefit, was a small electrical furnace which was the centre of many of his most interesting experiments. There were, in certain known drugs, constituents which it was his desire to eliminate. Dr. Oberzohn believed absolutely in many things that the modern chemist would dismiss as fantastical.
He believed in the philosopher’s stone, in the transmutation of base metals to rare; he had made diamonds, of no great commercial value, it is true; but his supreme faith was that somewhere in the materia medica was an infallible elixir which would
