“An eyeglass?”
“I have it,” said Gurther promptly.
“The cravat—is it not too proper?”
Gurther fingered his tie.
“For the grand habit I respectfully claim that the proper tie is desirable, if you will graciously permit.”
The Herr Doktor nodded.
“You shall go with God, Gurther,” he said piously, took a golden cigarette-case from his pocket and handed it to the man. “Sit down, my dear friend.”
He rose and pointed to the chair he had vacated.
“In my own chair, Gurther. Nothing is too good for you. Now here is the arrangement …”
Step by step he unfolded the timetable, for chronology was almost as great a passion with this strange and wicked man as it was with Aunt Alma.
So confident was Gurther of his disguise that he had gone in the open to speak to Oberzohn’s chauffeur, and out of the tail of his eye he had seen Manfred and Gonsalez approaching. It was the supreme test and was passed with credit to himself.
He did not dine at Mero’s; Gurther never ate or drank when he was wearing a disguise, knowing just how fatal that occupation could be. Instead, he had called a taxi, and had killed time by being driven slowly round and round the Outer Circle of Regent’s Park.
Gurther was doing a great deal of thinking in these days, and at the cost of much physical discomfort had curtailed his pernicious practices, that his head might be clear all the time. For if he were to live, that clear head of his was necessary.
The prisoner in the cellar occupied his thoughts. She had an importance for two reasons: she was a friend of the men whom he hated with a cold and deadly malignity beyond description; she represented wealth untold, and the Herr Doktor had even gone to the length of planning a marriage with her. She was not to be killed, not to be hurt; she was so important that the old man would take the risks attendant upon a marriage. There must be an excellent reason for that, because Dr. Oberzohn had not a very delicate mind.
He seemed to remember that, by the English law, a wife could not give evidence against her husband. He was not sure, but he had a dim notion that Pfeiffer had told him this: Pfeiffer was an educated man and had taken high honours at the gymnasium.
Gurther was not well read. His education had been of a scrappy character, and once upon a time he had been refused a leading part because of his provincial accent. That fault he had corrected in prison, under the tuition of a professor who was serving a life sentence for killing two women; but by the time Gurther had been released, he was a marked man, and the stage was a career lost to him forever.
Oberzohn possessed advantages which were not his. He was the master; Gurther was the servant. Oberzohn could determine events by reason of his vast authority, and the strings which he pulled in every part of the world. Even Gurther had accepted this position of blind, obedient servant, but now his angle had shifted, even as Oberzohn’s had moved in relation to Montague Newton. Perhaps because of this. The doctor, in curtailing one confidence, was enlarging another, and in the enlargement his prestige suffered.
Gurther was now the confidant, therefore the equal; and logically, the equal can always become the superior. He had dreamed dreams of a life of ease, a gratification of his sense of luxury without the sobering thought that somewhere round the corner was waiting a man ready to tap him on the shoulder … a white palace in a flowery land, with blue swimming pools, and supple girls who called him Master. Gurther began to see the light.
Until he had taken his seat in the theatre, he had not so much as glimpsed the man and the woman in the end box.
Joan was happy—happier than she remembered having been. Perhaps it was the reaction from her voluntary imprisonment. Certainly it was Monty’s reluctant agreement to a change of plans which so exalted her. Monty had dropped the thin pretence of an accommodation marriage; and once he was persuaded to this, the last hindrance to enjoyment was dissipated. Let Oberzohn take the girl if he wanted her; take, too, such heavy responsibility as followed. Monty Newton would get all that he wanted without the risk. Having arrived at this decision, he had ordered another bottle of champagne to seal the bargain, and they left Mero’s club a much happier couple than they had been when they entered.
“As soon as we’ve carved up this money, we’ll get away out of England,” he told her as they were driving to the theatre. “What about Buenos Aires for the winter, old girl?”
She did not know where Buenos Aires was, but she gurgled her delight at the suggestion, and Monty expatiated upon the joys of the South American summer, the beauties of B.A., its gaieties and amusements.
“I don’t suppose there’ll be any kick coming,” he said, “but it wouldn’t be a bad scheme if we took a trip round the world, and came back in about eighteen months’ time to settle down in London. My hectic past would have been forgotten by then—why, I might even get into Parliament.”
“How wonderful!” she breathed, and then: “What is this play about, Monty?”
“It’s a bit of a thrill, the very play for you—a detective story that will make your hair stand on end.”
She had all the gamin’s morbid interest in murder and crime, and she settled down in the box with a pleasant feeling of anticipation, and watched the development of the first act.
The scene was laid in a club, a low-down resort where the least desirable members of society met, and she drank in every word, because she knew the life, had seen that type of expensively dressed woman who swaggered on to the stage and was addressed familiarly by the club proprietor. She knew that steady-eyed detective when he made his
