To Thalia Drummond that meeting will always remain the most vivid and poignant memory of her association with the Crimson Circle.
The city contains many old churches, but none anterior in date to the church of St. Agnes on Powder Hill. It had escaped the ravages of the Great Fire, only to be smothered under by the busy city which had grown up about it. Enclosed by tall warehouses, so that its squat steeple was absent from the skyline, it had a congregation which might be numbered on the fingers of two hands, although it supported a vicar who preached punctiliously every week to a congregation which was practically paid to attend. Once a churchyard had surrounded it, and the bones of the faithful had been laid to peace within its shadow, but the avaricious city, grudging so much waste building land, had passed Acts which had removed the bones to a more salubrious situation and had covered the place of family vaults with office buildings.
Entrance to the church was up an alley which led from a side passage and the figures which slunk along the unlighted way seemed to melt through the almost invisible doors into a gloom even thicker than the night.
For in the church of St. Agnes the Crimson Circle held the first and last meeting of his servitors.
Here, again, his organisation was marvellous. Every member of his company had received explicit orders telling him to the very minute when he must arrive, so that no two came together. How he obtained the keys of the church; what careful manoeuvring he must have planned to bring the hour of meeting and the dispersal between the two periods when the lane would be patrolled by the City police, Thalia Drummond could only guess.
She came into the alleyway punctually, went up the two steps to a door which opened as she approached and was closed immediately she entered the lobby. There was no light of any kind, save for the faint light of night which filtered through a stained-glass window.
“Go straight ahead,” whispered a voice. “You will take the end of the second pew on the right.”
There were other people in the church. She could just distinguish them, two in each pew, a silent, ghostly congregation, none speaking to the other. Presently the man who had admitted her came into the church and walked to the altar rails, and at the first words she knew that the servants of the Crimson Circle sat in the presence of their master.
His voice was low and muffled and hollow; she guessed he wore the veil she had seen over his head the first night she had met him.
“My friends,” he said, and she heard every word, “the time has come when our society will be dispersed. You have read my offer in the public press; and you are interested to this extent, that I intend distributing at least twenty percent of the money which the Government must eventually give me amongst those who have served me. If there are any here who are nervous that we shall be interrupted, let me assure them that the police patrol does not pass for another quarter of an hour, and that it is quite impossible for the sound of my voice to reach outside the church.”
He raised his voice a little, and there was a hard note in it when he added:
“And to those who may have treachery in their hearts, and imagine that so widely announced a meeting might bring about my undoing, let me say that it is impossible that I shall be captured tonight. Ladies and gentlemen, I will not disguise from you that we are in considerable danger. Facts which may enable the police to identify me have on two occasions almost come to light. I have upon my tracks, Derrick Yale, who I will not deny is a source of considerable anxiety to me, and Inspector Parr”—he paused—“who is not to be despised. In this supreme moment I do not hesitate to call upon every one of you for an extraordinary effort of assistance. Tomorrow you will each receive operation orders prepared in such detail that it will be impossible for you to misunderstand any particular requirement I have made known. Remember that you are as much in danger as I,” he said more softly, “and your reward shall be correspondingly great. Now you will pass out of the church one by one, at thirty seconds interval, beginning with the first two on the right, continuing with the first two on the left. Go!”
At intervals these dark figures glided along the aisle and vanished through the door to the left of the pulpit.
The man at the chancel rails waited until the church was empty and then he, too, passed through the door into the lobby and into the passage.
He locked the outer door and slipped the key into his pocket. The church clock was booming the half-hour when he called a taxicab and was driven westward.
Thalia Drummond had preceded him by a quarter of an hour, and in the taxi which carried her to the same end of the town she brought about a lightning transformation of her appearance. The old black raincoat which covered her to the throat, the heavy-veiled black hat, were taken off. Beneath it she wore a cloak of delicate silk tissue, covering an evening dress which would have satisfied her apparently exigent master.
She took
