“It is absurd,” she said. “I have no money. If Mr. Oberzohn puts me up to ransom, it will have to be something under a hundred!”
“Put you up to ransom?” said Joan. “I don’t get you there. But you’re rich all right—I can tell you that. Monty says so, and Monty wouldn’t lie to me.”
Mirabelle was bewildered. It seemed almost impossible that a man of Oberzohn’s intelligence and sources of information could make such a mistake. And yet Joan was earnest.
“They must have mistaken me for somebody else,” she said, but Joan did not answer. She was sitting up in a listening attitude, and her eyes were directed towards the iron door which separated their sleeping apartment from the larger vault. She had heard the creak of the trap turning and the sound of feet coming down the stairs.
Mirabelle rose as Oberzohn came in. He wore his black dressing-gown, his smoking-cap was at the back of his head, and the muddy Wellington boots which he had pulled over his feet looked incongruous, and would at any other time have provoked her to laughter. He favoured her with a stiff nod.
“You have slept well, gracious lady?” he said, and to her amazement took her cold hand in his and kissed it.
She felt the same feeling of revulsion and unreality as had overcome her that night at the dance when Gurther had similarly saluted her.
“It is a nice place, for young people and for old.” He looked round the apartment with satisfaction. “Here I should be content to spend my life reading my books, and giving my mind to thought, but”—he spread his hands and shrugged—“what would you? I am a business man, with immense interests in every part of the world. I am rich, too, beyond your dreams! I have stores in every part of the world, and thousands of men and women on my payroll.”
Why was he telling her all this, she wondered, reciting the facts in a monotonous voice. Surely he had not come down to emphasize the soundness of his financial position?
“I am not very much interested in your business, Mr. Oberzohn,” she said, “but I want to know why I am being detained here. Surely, if you’re so rich, you do not want to hold me to ransom?”
“To ransom?” His forehead went up and down. “That is foolish talk. Did she tell you?” He pointed at the girl, and his face went as black as thunder.
“No, I guessed,” said Mirabelle quickly, not wishing to get her companion into bad odour.
“I do not hold you to ransom. I hold you, lovely lady, because you are good for my eyes. Did not Heine say, ‘The beauty of women is a sedative to the soul’? You should read Heine: he is frivolous, but in his stupidity there are many clever thoughts. Now tell me, lovely lady, have you all you desire?”
“I want to go out,” she said. “I can’t stay in this underground room without danger to my health.”
“Soon you shall go.” He bowed stiffly again, and shuffled across the floor to the furnace. Behind this were the two baize-covered boxes, and one he lifted tenderly. “Here are secrets such as you should not pry into,” he said in his awkward English. “The most potent of chemicals, colossal in power. The ignorant would touch them and they would explode—you understand?”
He addressed Mirabelle, who did not understand but made no answer.
“They must be kept warm for that reason. One I take, the other I leave. You shall not touch it—that is understood? My good friend has told you?” He brought his eyes to Joan.
“I understand all right,” she said. “Listen, Oberzohn: when am I going out for a walk? This place is getting on my nerves already.”
“Tonight you shall have exercise with the lovely lady. I myself will accompany you.”
“Why am I here, Mr. Oberzohn?” Mirabelle asked again.
“You are here because you are in danger,” said Oberzohn, holding the green box under his arm. “You are in very great danger.” He nodded with every word. “There are certain men, of all the most infamous, who have a design upon your life. They are criminal, cunning and wise—but not so cunning or wise as Dr. Oberzohn. Because I will not let you fall into their hands I keep you here, young miss. Good morning.”
Again he bowed stiffly and went out, the iron door clanging behind him. They heard him climbing the stairs, the thud of the trap as it fell, and the rumble which Joan, at any rate, knew was made by the cement barrel being rolled to the top of the trap.
“Pleasant little fellow, isn’t he?” said Joan bitterly. “Him and his chemicals!” She glared down at the remaining box. “If I were sure it wouldn’t explode, I should smash it to smithereens!” she said.
Later she told the prisoner of Oberzohn’s obsession; of how he spent time and money in his search for the vital elixir.
“Monty thinks he’ll find it,” she said seriously. “Do you know, that old man has had an ox stewed down to a pint? There used to be a king in Europe—I forget his name—who had the same stuff, but not so strong. Monty says that Oberzohn hardly ever takes a meal—just a teaspoonful of this dope and he’s right for the day. And Monty says …”
For the rest of that dreary morning the girl listened without hearing to the wise sayings and clever acts of Monty; and every now and again her eyes strayed to the baize-covered box which contained “the most potent chemicals,” and she wondered whether, in the direst extremity, she would be justified in employing these dread forces for her soul’s salvation.
XXIII
The Courier
Elijah Washington came up to London for a consultation. With
