“We think exactly alike. I intended suggesting that course,” he said gravely.
“The trouble is Meadows. I should like the case to have been settled one way or the other, and for Meadows to be out of it altogether. One doesn’t wish to embarrass him. But the urgency is very obvious. It would have been very easy,” said Leon, a note of regret in his gentle voice. “Now of course it is impossible until the girl is safe. But for that”—he shrugged his shoulders—“tomorrow friend Oberzohn would have experienced a sense of lassitude. No pain … just a little tiredness. Sleep, coma—death on the third day. He is an old man, and one has no desire to hurt the aged. There is no hurt like fear. As for Gurther, we will try a more violent method, unless Oberzohn gets him first. I sincerely hope he does.”
“This is news to me. What is this about Gurther?” asked Poiccart.
Manfred told him.
“Leon is right now,” Poiccart nodded. He rose from the table and unlocked the door. “If any of you men wish to sleep, your rooms are ready; the curtains are drawn, and I will wake you at such and such an hour.”
But neither were inclined for sleep. George had to see a client that morning: a man with a curious story to tell. Leon wanted a carburetter adjusted. They would both sleep in the afternoon, they said.
The client arrived soon after. Poiccart admitted him and put him in the dining-room to wait before he reported his presence.
“I think this is your harem man,” he said, and went downstairs to show up the caller.
He was a commonplace-looking man with a straggling, fair moustache and a weak chin.
“Debilitated or degenerate,” he suggested.
“Probably a little of both,” assented Manfred, when the butler had announced him.
He came nervously into the room and sat down opposite to Manfred.
“I tried to get you on the phone last night,” he complained, “but I got no answer.”
“My office hours are from ten till two,” said George good-humouredly. “Now will you tell me again this story of your sister?”
The man leaned back in the chair and clasped his knees, and began in a singsong voice, as though he were reciting something that he had learned by heart.
“We used to live in Turkey. My father was a merchant of Constantinople, and my sister, who went to school in England, got extraordinary ideas, and came back a most violent pro-Turk. She is a very pretty girl and she came to know some of the best Turkish families, although my father and I were dead against her going about with these people. One day she went to call on Hymar Pasha, and that night she didn’t come back. We went to the Pasha’s house and asked for her, but he told us she had left at four o’clock. We then consulted the police, and they told us, after they had made investigations, that she had been seen going on board a ship which left for Odessa the same night. I hadn’t seen her for ten years, until I went down to the Gringo Club, which is a little place in the East End—not high class, you understand, but very well conducted. There was a cabaret show after midnight, and whilst I was sitting there, thinking about going home—very bored, you understand, because that sort of thing doesn’t appeal to me—I saw a girl come out from behind a curtain dressed like a Turkish woman, and begin a dance. She was in the middle of the dance when her veil slipped off. It was Marie! She recognized me at once, and darted through the curtains. I tried to follow her, but they held me back.”
“Did you go to the police?” asked Manfred.
The man shook his head.
“No, what is the use of the police?” he went on in a monotonous tone. “I had enough of them in Constantinople, and I made up my mind that I would get outside help. And then somebody told me of you, and I came along. Mr. Manfred, is it impossible for you to rescue my sister? I’m perfectly sure that she is being detained forcibly and against her will.”
“At the Gringo Club?” asked Manfred.
“Yes,” he nodded.
“I’ll see what I can do,” said George. “Perhaps my friends and I will come down and take a look round some evening. In the meantime will you go back to your friend Dr. Oberzohn and tell him that you have done your part and I will do mine? Your little story will go into my collection of Unplausible Inventions!”
He touched a bell and Poiccart came in.
“Show Mr. Liggins out, please. Don’t hurt him—he may have a wife and children, though it is extremely unlikely.”
The visitor slunk from the room as though he had been whipped.
The door had scarcely closed upon him when Poiccart called Leon down from his room.
“Son,” he said, “George wants that man trailed.”
Leon peeped out after the retiring victim of Turkish tyranny.
“Not a hard job,” he said. “He has flat feet!”
Poiccart returned to the consulting-room. “Who is he?” he asked.
“I don’t know. He’s been sent here either by Oberzohn or by friend Newton, the general idea being to bring us all together at the Gringo Club—which is fairly well known to me—on some agreeable evening. A bad actor! He has no tone. I shouldn’t be surprised if Leon finds something very interesting about him.”
“He’s been before, hasn’t he?”
Manfred nodded.
“Yes, he was here the day after Barberton came. At least, I had his letter the next morning and saw him for a few moments in the day. Queer devil, Oberzohn! And an industrious devil,” he added. “He sets everybody moving at once, and of course he’s right. A good general doesn’t attack with a platoon, but with an army, with all his strength, knowing that if he fails to pierce the
