“I can take Farrington tomorrow if I want to,” he said after a moment, “but I wish to gather up every string of organization in my hands.”
“What of Lady Constance Dex?” asked Ela. “Whilst we are waiting, she is in some little danger.”
T. B. shook his head.
“If she is not dead now,” he said simply, “she will be spared. If Farrington wished to kill her—for Farrington it was who spirited her away—he could have done so in the house; no one would have been any the wiser as to the murderer. Lady Constance must wait; we must trust to luck before I inspect that underground chamber of which I imagine she is at present an unwilling inmate. I want to crush this blackmailing force,” he said, thumping the table with energy; “I want to sweep out of England the whole organization which is working right under the nose of the police and in defiance of all laws; and until I have done that, I shall not sleep soundly in my bed.”
“And Poltavo?”
“Poltavo,” smiled T. B., “can wait for just a little while.”
He paid the bill and the two men passed out of the hotel and crossed Piccadilly. A man who had been lounging along apparently studying the shop windows saw them out of the corner of his eye and followed them carelessly. Another man, no less ostentatiously reading a newspaper, as he walked along the pavement on the opposite side of the thoroughfare, followed close behind.
T. B. and his companion turned into Burlington Arcade and reached Cork Street. Save for one or two pedestrians the street was utterly deserted, and the first of the shadowers quickened his pace. He put his hand in his tail pocket and took out something which glinted in the April sunlight, but before he could raise his hand the fourth man, now on his heels, dropped his newspaper, and flinging one arm around the shadower’s neck, and placing his knee in the small of the other’s back, wrenched the pistol away with his disengaged hand.
T. B. turned at the sound of the struggle and came back to assist the shadowing detective. The prisoner was a little man, sharp-featured, and obviously a member of one of the great Latin branches of the human race. A tiny black moustache, fierce scowling eyebrows, and liquid brown eyes now blazing with hate, spoke of a Southern origin.
Deftly the three police officers searched and disarmed him; a pair of adjustable handcuffs snapped upon the man’s thin wrists, and before the inevitable crowd could gather the prisoner and his custodians were being whirled to Vine Street in a cab.
They placed the man in the steel dock and asked him the usual questions, but he maintained a dogged silence. That his object had been assassination no one could doubt, for in addition to the automatic pistol, which he had obviously intended using at short range, trusting to luck to make his escape, they found a long stiletto in his breast pocket.
More to the point, and of greater interest to T. B., there was a three-line scrawl on a piece of paper in Italian, which, translated, showed that minute instructions had been given to the would-be murderer as to T. B.’s whereabouts.
“Put him in a cell,” said T. B. “I think we are going to find things out. If this is not one of Poltavo’s hired thugs, I am greatly mistaken.”
Whatever he was, the man offered no information which might assist the detective in his search for the truth, but maintained an unbroken silence, and T. B. gave up the task of questioning him in sheer despair.
The next morning at daybreak the prisoner was aroused and told to dress. He was taken out to where a motor car was awaiting him, and a few moments later he was speeding on the way to Dover. Two detective officers placed him on a steamer and accompanied him to Calais. At Calais they took a courteous leave of him, handing him a hundred francs and the information in his own tongue that he had been deported on an order from the Home Secretary, obtained at midnight the previous night.
The prisoner took his departure with some eagerness and spent the greater portion of his hundred francs in addressing a telegram to Poltavo.
T. B. Smith, who knew that telegram would come, was sitting in the Continental instrument room of the General Post Office when it arrived. He was handed a copy of the telegram and read it. Then he smiled.
“Thank you,” he said, as he passed it back to the Superintendent of the department, “this may now be transmitted for delivery. I know all I want to know.”
Poltavo received the message an hour later, and having read it, cursed his subordinate’s indiscretion, for the message was in Italian, plain for everybody to read who understood that language, and its purport easy to understand for anybody who had a knowledge of the facts.
He waited all that day for a visit from the police, and when T. B. arrived in the evening Poltavo was ready with an excuse and an explanation. But neither excuse nor explanation was asked for. T. B.’s questions had to do with something quite different, namely the new Mrs. Doughton and her vanished fortune.
“I was in the confidence of Mr. Farrington,” said Poltavo, relieved to find the visit had nothing to do with that which he most dreaded, “but I was amazed to discover that the safe was empty. It was a tremendous tragedy for the poor young lady. She is in Paris now with her husband,” he added.
T. B. nodded.
“Perhaps you will give me their address?” he asked.
“With pleasure,” said Count Poltavo, reaching for his address book.
“I may be going to Paris myself tomorrow,” T. B. went on, “and I will look these young people up. I suppose it is not the correct thing for anyone to call upon honeymoon
