He had some work to do, heavy work for a man who found himself panting when he climbed stairs. And though four of his best and most desperate men were waiting in his parlour drinking his whisky and filling the little room with their rank cigar smoke, he preferred to tackle this task which he had already begun as soon as night fell, without their assistance or knowledge.
On the edge of the deep hole in his grounds, where the wild convolvulus grew amidst the rusty corners of discarded tins and oil barrels, was a patch of earth that yielded easily to the spade. When the factory had been built, the depression had been bigger, but the builders had filled in half the hole with the light soil that they had dug out of the factory’s foundations.
He took his spade, which he had left in the factory, and, skirting the saucer-shaped depression, he reached a spot where a long trench had already been dug. Taking off his fine coat and waistcoat, unfastening cravat and collar and carefully depositing them upon the folded coat, he continued his work, stopping now and again to wipe his streaming brow.
He had to labour in the dark, but this was no disadvantage; he could feel the edges of the pit. In an hour the top of the trench was level with his chin, and, stooping to clear the bottom of loose soil, he climbed up with greater difficulty than he had anticipated, and it was only after the third attempt that he managed to reach the top, out of breath and short of temper.
He dressed again, and with his electric torch surveyed the pit he had made and grunted his satisfaction.
He was keenly sensitive to certain atmospheres, and needed no information about the change which had come over his subordinates. In their last consultation Gurther had been less obsequious, had even smoked in his presence without permission—absentmindedly, perhaps, but the offence was there. And Dr. Oberzohn, on the point of smacking his face for his insolence, heard a warning voice within himself which had made his hand drop back at his side. Or was it the look he saw on Gurther’s face? The man was beyond the point where he could discipline him in the old Junker way. For although Dr. Oberzohn contemned all things Teutonic, he had a sneaking reverence for the military caste of that nation.
He left the spade sticking in a heap of turned earth. He would need that again, and shortly. Unless Gurther failed. Somehow he did not anticipate a failure in this instance. Mr. Monty Newton had not yet grown suspicious, would not be on his guard. His easy acceptance of the theatre ticket showed his mind in this respect.
The four men in his room rose respectfully as he came in. The air was blue with smoke, and Lew Cuccini offered a rough apology. He had been released that morning from detention, for Meadows had found it difficult to frame a charge which did not expose the full activities of the police, and the part they were playing in relation to Mirabelle Leicester. Evidently Cuccini had been reproaching, in his own peculiar way and in his own unprincipled language, the cowardice of his three companions, for the atmosphere seemed tense when the doctor returned. Yet, as was subsequently proved, the appearance of discord was deceptive; might indeed have been staged for their host’s benefit.
“I’ve just been telling these birds—” began Cuccini.
“Oh, shut up, Lew!” growled one of his friends. “If that crazy man hadn’t been shouting your name, we should not have gone back! He’d have wakened the dead. And our orders were to retire at the first serious sign of an alarm. That’s right, doctor, isn’t it?”
“Sure it’s right,” said the doctor blandly. “Never be caught—that is a good motto. Cuccini was caught.”
“And I’d give a year of my life to meet that Dago again,” said Cuccini, between his teeth.
He was delightfully inconsistent, for he came into the category, having been born in Milan, and had had his early education in the Italian quarter of Hartford, Connecticut.
“He’d have tortured me too … he was going to put lighted wax matches between my fingers—”
“And then you spilled it!” accused one of the three hotly. “You talk about us bolting!”
“Silence!” roared the doctor. “This is unseemly! I have forgiven everything. That shall be enough for you all. I will hear no other word.”
“Where is Gurther?” Cuccini asked the question.
“He has gone away. Tonight he leaves for America. He may return—who knows? But that is the intention.”
“Snaking?” asked somebody, and there was a little titter of laughter.
“Say, doctor, how do you work that stunt?” Cuccini leaned forward, his cigar between his fingers, greatly intrigued. “I saw no snakes down at Rath Hall, and yet he was bitten, just as that Yankee was bitten—Washington.”
“He will die,” said the doctor complacently. He was absurdly jealous for the efficacy of his method.
“He was alive yesterday, anyway. We shadowed him to the station.”
“Then he was not bitten—no, that is impossible. When the snakebites,”—Oberzohn raised his palms and gazed piously at the ceiling—“after that there is nothing. No, no, my friend, you are mistaken.”
“I tell you I’m not making any mistake,” said the other doggedly. “I was in the room, I tell you, soon after they brought him in, and I heard one of the busies say that his face was all wet.”
“So!” said Oberzohn dully. “That is very bad.”
“But how do you do it, doctor? Do you shoot or sump’n’?”
“Let us talk about eventual wealth and happiness,” said the doctor. “Tonight is a night of great joy for me. I will sing you a song.”
Then, to the amazement of the men and to their great unhappiness, he sang, in a thin, reedy old voice, the story of a young peasant who had been thwarted in love and had thrown himself from a cliff into a seething waterfall. It was a lengthy song, intensely sentimental, and his voice held
