“A perfume?”
“Yes, sir, it was perfume, but stronger—more like incense. I thought at first it might be an old bale of stuff that had been thrown out, or else I was deceiving myself. I began poking about in the rubbish heaps—but they didn’t smell of scent! Then I went back into the building again, but there was no smell at all. It was very strong when I returned to the back of the factory, and then I saw a little waft of smoke come out of a ventilator close to the ground. My first idea was that the place was on fire, but when I knelt down, it was this scent.”
“Joss-sticks?” said Poiccart quickly.
“That’s what it was!” said the detective. “Like incense, yet not like it. I knelt down and listened at the grating, and I’ll swear that I heard voices. They were very faint.”
“Men’s?”
“No, women’s.”
“Could you see anything?”
“No, sir, it was a blind ventilator; there was probably a shaft there—in fact, I’m sure there was, because I pushed a stone through one of the holes and heard it drop some distance down.”
“There may be an underground room there,” said Poiccart, “and somebody’s burnt joss-sticks to sweeten the atmosphere.”
“Under the factory? It’s not in the plans of the building. I’ve had them from the surveyor’s office and examined them,” said George, “although surveyors’ plans aren’t infallible. A man like Oberzohn would not hesitate to break so unimportant a thing as a building law!”
Leon came in at that moment, heard the story and was in complete agreement with Poiccart’s theory.
“I wondered at the time we saw the plans whether we ought to accept that as conclusive,” he said. “The store was built at the end of 1914, when architects and builders took great liberties and pleaded the exigencies of the war.”
Digby went on with his story.
“I was going back to the barge to get past the water-gate, but I saw the old man coming down the steps of the house, so I climbed the wall, and very glad I was that I’d shifted that broken glass, or I should never have got over.”
Manfred pulled his watch from his pocket with a frown. They had lost nearly an hour of precious time with their inquiries in Chester Square.
“I hope we’re not too late,” he said ominously. “Now, Leon …”
But Leon had gone down the stairs in three strides.
XXX
Joan a Prisoner
Dazed with grief, not knowing, not seeing, not caring, not daring to think, Joan suffered herself to be led quickly into the obscurity of the side-street, and did not even realize that Oberzohn’s big limousine had drawn up by the sidewalk.
“Get in,” said the woman harshly.
Joan was pushed through the door and guided to a seat by somebody who was already in the machine.
She collapsed in a corner moaning as the door slammed and the car began to move.
“Where are we going? Let me get back to him!”
“The gracious lady will please restrain her grief,” said a hateful voice, and she swung round and stared unseeingly to the place whence the voice had come.
The curtains of the car had been drawn; the interior was as black as pitch.
“You—you beast!” she gasped. “It’s you, is it? … Gurther! You murdering beast!”
She struck at him feebly, but he caught her wrist.
“The gracious lady will most kindly restrain her grief,” he said suavely. “The Herr Newton is not dead. It was a little trick in order to baffle certain interferers.”
“You’re lying, you’re lying!” she screamed, struggling to escape from those hands of steel. “He’s dead! You know he’s dead, and you killed him! You snake-man!”
“The gracious lady must believe me,” said Gurther earnestly. They were passing through a public part of the town and at any moment a policeman might hear her shrieks. “If Herr Newton had not pretended to be hurt, he would have been arrested … he follows in the next car.”
“You’re trying to quieten me,” she said, “but I won’t be quiet.”
And then a hand came over her mouth and pressed her head back against the cushions. She struggled desperately, but two fingers slid up her face and compressed her nostrils. She was being suffocated. She struggled to free herself from the tentacle hold of him, and then slipped into unconsciousness.
Gurther felt the straining figure go limp and removed his hands. She did not feel the prick of the needle on her wrist, though the drugging was clumsily performed in the darkness and in a car that was swaying from side to side. He felt her pulse, his long fingers pressed her throat and felt the throb of the carotid artery; propping her so that she could not fall, Herr Gurther sank back luxuriously into a corner of the limousine and lit a cigar.
The journey was soon over. In a very short time they were bumping down Hangman’s Lane and turned so abruptly into the factory grounds that one of the mudguards buckled to the impact of the gatepost.
It must have been two hours after the departure of her companion, when Mirabelle, lying on her bed, half dozing, was wakened by her book slipping to the floor, and sat up quickly to meet the apprising stare of the man whom, of all men in the world, she disliked most cordially. Dr. Oberzohn had come noiselessly into the room and under his arm was a pile of books.
“I have brought these for you,” he said, in his booming voice, and stacked them neatly on the table.
She did not answer.
“Novels of a frivolous kind, such as you will enjoy,” he said, unconscious of offence. “I desired the seller of the books to pick them for me. Fiction stories
