“I did,” said Drummond grimly, “as I told that ass McIver over a cocktail at the Regency. He was plotting to blow up three thousand men’s employment, Tum-tum, with guncotton. It was at his instigation that four men were killed in Manchester as the result of another outrage. So I lashed him to his bed, and underneath him I put what he thought was a slab of guncotton with fuse attached. It wasn’t guncotton: it was wood. And he went mad.” He paused for a moment, and then continued. “Now one for you. Why did you let Carl Peterson escape? I nearly killed him that night, after I’d bayoneted the Russian.”
“How did you know he had escaped?” demanded Sir Bryan.
Hugh felt in his pocket and produced a note. “Read it,” he said, passing it across the desk.
“It was a pity you forgot that there might be another key to the padlock, Captain Drummond,” it ran. “And Giuseppi is an old friend of mine. I quite enjoyed our single.”
Sir Bryan returned the note without a word, and Drummond replaced it in his pocket.
“That’s twice,” he said quietly, and suddenly the Director of Criminal Investigation, than whom no shrewder judge of men lived, saw and understood the real Drummond below the surface of inanity—the real Drummond, cool, resourceful, and inflexible of will—the real Drummond who was capable of organizing and carrying through anything and everything once he had set his mind to it.
“That’s twice,” he repeated, still in the same quiet tone. “Next time—I win.”
“But no more Black Gang, Hugh,” said the other warningly.
Drummond waved a huge hand. “I have spoken, Tum-tum. A rose by any other name, perhaps—but no more Black Gang.”
He rose and grinned at his friend.
“It’s deuced good of you, old man, and all that …”
The eyes of the two men met.
“If it was found out, I should be looking for another job,” remarked Sir Bryan dryly. “And perhaps I should not get the two thousand pounds which I understand the widow of the late lamented Ginger Martin has received anonymously.”
“Shut up,” said Drummond awkwardly.
“Delighted, old man,” returned the other. “But the police in that district are demanding a rise of pay. She has been drunk and disorderly five times in the last week.”
To those strong-minded individuals who habitually read the entrancing chitchat of Mrs. Tattle in The Daily Observer, there appeared the following morning a delightful description of the last big fancy-dress ball of the season held at the Albert Hall the preceding night. Much of it may be passed over as unworthy of perpetuation, but the concluding paragraph had its points of interest.
“Halfway through the evening,” she wrote in her breezy way, “just as I was consuming an ice in one hand with the Duchess of Sussex, and nibbling the last of the asparagus in the other with the Princess of Montevideo, tastefully disguised as an umbrella stand, we were treated to the thrill of the evening. It seemed as if suddenly there sprang up all round the room a mass of mysterious figures clothed from head to foot in black. The dear Princess grew quite hysterical, and began to wonder if it was a ‘hold up’ as she so graphically described it. In fact, for safety, she secreted the glass-headed parasol—the only remaining heirloom of the Royal House—and which formed a prominent part of her costume, behind a neighbouring palm. Whispers of the mysterious Black Gang were heard on all sides, but we were soon reassured. Belovd’st, they all carried champagne bottles! Wasn’t it too, too thrilling!! And after a while they all formed up in a row, and at a word from the leader—a huge man, my dears, puffectly ’uge—they discharged the corks in a volley at one of the boxes, which sheltered no less than two celebrities—Sir Bryan Johnstone, the chief of all the policemen, and Sir John Haverton, the Home Secretary. It is rumoured that one of the corks became embedded in Sir John’s right eye—but rumour is a lying jade, is not she? Anyway loud sounds of revelry and mirth were heard proceeding from the box, and going a little later to powder my nose I distinctly saw Sir John being taught the intricacies of the foxtrot by the huge man in the passage. Presumably the cork had by then been removed from his eye, but one never knows, does one? Anything can happen at an Albert Hall ball, especially at the end of the season.”
Colophon
The Black Gang
was published in by
H. C. McNeile.
This ebook was produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
Chris Spurgeon,
and is based on a transcription produced in by
Roy Glashan
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Internet Archive.
The cover page is adapted from
Muscle Flexing,
a painting completed in by
Osmar Schindler.
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League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy
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