“I think it’s damned unsound,” remarked Drummond languidly. “If you propose to take me and endeavour to make my head impinge on a stone wall, someone is going to get a thick ear. Besides, the bridge isn’t open, and even your pal, the not too intelligent gatekeeper, might stick in his toes a bit. Of course”—he added hopefully—“you might say you were doing it for the movies. Tell him you’re Charlie Chaplin, but that you dressed in such a hurry you’ve forgotten your moustache.”
The redheaded Russian was snarling venomously.
“Let me get at him, chief. He won’t try being funny again.”
“No. I shall be too occupied sprinkling myself with insect powder,” retorted Drummond vulgarly. “Why, you lousy brute, if you got at me, as you call it, and there wasn’t half a battalion of infantry holding guns to my head, I’d break your neck with one hand strapped behind my back.”
The Russian half rose to his feet, his teeth bared, and Peterson pulled him back into his chair.
“You’ll get your chance in a moment or two, Yulowski,” he remarked savagely. Then he turned once more on Drummond, and the genial look had vanished from his face. “Doubtless your humour appeals to some people; it does not to me. Moreover, I am rather in a hurry. I do not propose, Captain Drummond, to take you to the bridge and endeavour to make your head impinge on a wall, as you call it. There is another far simpler method of producing the same result. The impinging will take place in this house. As a soldier you should know the result of a blow over the head with the butt of a rifle. And I can assure you that there will be no bungling this time. Yulowski is an expert in such matters, and I shall stay personally to see that it is done. I think we can give a very creditable imitation of what would have happened had my little story been true, and tomorrow night—I see that it is getting a little too light now for the purpose—your two bodies will be carried over and dropped in the river. The length of time you will both have been dead will be quite correct, within an hour or so—and everything will be most satisfactory for all concerned.”
Drummond passed his tongue over his lips, and despite himself his voice shook a little.
“Am I to understand,” he said after a moment, “that you propose to let that man butcher us here—in this house—with a rifle?”
“Just so,” answered Peterson. “That is exactly what you are to understand.”
“You are going to let him bash my wife over the head with a rifle butt?”
“I am going to order him to do so,” said Peterson mildly. “And very shortly at that. We must not have any mistakes over the length of time you’ve both been dead. I confess it sounds drastic, but I can assure you it will be quite sudden. Yulowski, as I told you, is an expert. He had a lot of experience in Russia.”
“You inhuman devil!” muttered Drummond dazedly. “You can do what you like to me, but for Heaven’s sake let her off.”
He was staring fascinated at the Russian, who had risen and crossed to a cupboard in the wall. There was something almost maniacal in the look on his face—the look of a savage, brute beast, confronted with the prey it desires.
“Impossible, my dear young friend,” murmured Peterson regretfully. “It affords me no pleasure to have her killed, but I have no alternative. To see you dead, I would cross two continents,” he snarled suddenly, “but”—and his voice became normal again—“only bitter necessity compels me to adopt such measures with Phyllis. You see she knows too much.” He whispered in Count Zadowa’s ear, who rose and left the room, to return shortly with half a dozen more men.
“Yes, she knows too much, and so I fear I cannot let her off. She would be able to tell such a lot of most inconvenient things to the police. This house is so admirably adapted for certain of our activities that it would be a world of pities to draw undesirable attention to it. Especially now that Count Zadowa has been compelled to leave his own office, owing entirely to your reprehensible curiosity.”
But Drummond was paying no attention to him. His eyes were fixed on the Russian, who had come back slowly into the centre of the room, carrying a rifle in his hand. It was an ordinary Russian service rifle, and a bayonet was fixed in position. Yulowski handled it lovingly, as he stood beside Peterson—and suddenly Count Zadowa turned white and began to tremble. To throw a bomb into a room and run for your life is one thing: to sit at a table in cold blood and witness a double execution is another. Even Peterson’s iron nerves seemed a little shaken, and his hand trembled as he removed his cigar. But there was no sign of relenting on his face; no sign of faltering in his voice as he spoke to the men who had just come into the room.
“In the interest of us all,” he remarked steadily, “I have decided that it is necessary to kill both the prisoners.” He made a sign, and Drummond, sitting almost paralyzed in his chair, found both his arms gripped, with three men hanging on to each.
“The man,” continued Peterson, “has been interfering with our work in England—the work of the Red International. He is the leader of the Black Gang, as you probably know; and as you probably do not know, it is he and his gang who have been responsible for the mysterious disappearance of some of our most trusted workers. Therefore with regard to him there can be no second thought: he deserves death, and he must die. With regard to the woman, the case is a little different. She has done us no active harm—but she is a
