named Daniels, who sometimes goes over reports with me in the evening, but he had just left. I was sitting there in my study,' he pointed to the window of the room I had observed before, 'at a table drawn near the window, with the lamp lighted. It was very warm, and the window was up. All of a sudden I looked up from my papers-and there was Hogenauer, standing outside the window looking in at me.'
He paused, and looked at H.M. 'Merrivale, it was dashed queer. You used to say I hadn't much imagination. Perhaps not; I don't know. I hadn't heard the man approach; I simply looked up, and there he was; or half of him over the sill of the window. I knew him in a second. He hadn't changed much, but he looked ill. He was as little and mild and sharp-featured as ever, but his skin looked like oiled paper over the bridge of his nose. I've seen people in a bout of malaria who had eyes just like his. He said, `Good evening,' and then — just as casual as be damned — he climbed over the sill of the window into the room, and took off his hat, and sat down opposite me. Then he said, `I want to sell you a secret for two thousand pounds.''
Charters looked satirically at both of us.
'Of course, I had to pretend I didn't know him, and what was he doing there, and how did he know me. He corrected me very mildly, and said: `I think you know me. I once wrote you a letter explaining why I was going to Germany, and why I could not reveal the dye-process on which I was working. In Berlin we knew all the men who worked against us in your bureau.''
'Bah!' snorted H.M., who was' evidently stung.
'Bluff' said Charters. 'And yet I don't think it was. He might be mad, though: that was what occurred to me. The long and short of it was that he told me L. was in England, and offered to tell me who L. is, and where to find him, for two thousand pounds. I told him I was no longer in the service, and asked him why he didn't communicate with you. He said, very calmly, that to communicate with you — and to be known as having done it — would be as much as his life was worth. He said: `I want two thousand pounds, but I will not risk my life for it.' Then I asked him why he needed money so badly. He began to talk of his `invention,' or his `experiment'. Merrivale has told you as much of that as I know… and I began to think he was mad. What I can't describe is the supreme — what's the word I want? — the supreme quietness of the man, sitting with his hands folded on his hat, and his bald head, and his eyes as big and fixed as a stuffed cat's.
'Anyhow, Blake, I made a trip to London to see Merrivale next day. Hogenauer hadn't been lying; L. is believed to be in England now.'
Charters stopped, and dusted the knees of his trousers like a man who wishes to get rid of the whole thing. His conscience appeared to be bothering him.
'Ho ho ho,' chortled H.M., with a leer. 'Charters has got it stuck in his throat; he can't go any farther; he can't tell you where you come in, Ken. But I will. You're goin' to do a spot of housebreaking.'
I set down my empty glass, looked at H.M., and began to feel a trifle ill.
'Point's this,' pursued H.M. obstinately, and pointed with a vast flipper. 'If Hogenauer's on the level, he could get his two thousand quid. Oh, yes. We've made these little bargains before, though nobody ever whispers it to the police. I'd be willing to pay it out of my own pocket. But is be on the level? Son, there's something awful fishy about this whole business, and I smell the blood of an Englishman again. It's all wrong. There's somethin' rummy and devilish peepin' out of it, which we don't begin to understand. Therefore we got to begin to understand it. Therefore, you're goin' to bust into this beggar's house, and overhaul his papers if he's got any, and find out what the flickering lights mean when they whirl round the flower-pot. Got it?'
Charters cleared his throat. 'Of course,' he said, 'I can't give you any official sanction.
'Exactly,' I said, 'so what if I'm caught? Damn it all, tomorrow I'm supposed to be married. Why don't you hire a professional burglar?'
'Because I couldn't protect a professional burglar,' answered the Chief Constable rather snappishly, 'and I can protect you. Besides, there will be no danger. Hogenauer is going to Bristol to-night, not later than by the eight o'clock train, and he won't be back until tomorrow. He was at Dr. Antrim's last night, and told Antrim that. As for the manservant, he's courting a girl in Torquay and won't be back until midnight at the earliest. You will have a couple of hours after dark — probably more-to make a thorough examination of an empty house.' Then Charters grew uneasy, after the effervescence of the old days had subsided. 'But it's damned irregular all the same,' he grumbled. 'I shouldn't blame you if you refused to go. Mind, Merrivale, this is your responsibility entirely. If anything should go wrong-'
I pointed out, with some heat, just whose responsibility it was. H.M. was soothing. 'Looky here!' he added, with an air of inspiration, as though he were dangling a peppermint-stick in front of a child. He lumbered into the house and emerged with a small black satchel, rather like a doctor's medicine-case. From this he took a series of skeleton keys, or `twirlers' as we used to call them, a brace and bit, wedges, a forceps, and a glass-worker's diamond. Next came a clawshaped jemmy whose design was new to me, a small bottle of paraffin oil to use on the metal instruments, a pair of rubber gloves, and a very curious tiny bottle which glowed inside like a cluster of fireflies.
'The Compleat Burglar,' observed H.M. with ghoulish relish. 'Don't it fire your blood, Ken? This is a telescopic jemmy; finest thing made; a yard long extended, and it's got a powerful leverage. This bottle of phosphorus is much better than a flashlight. Flashlights have a habit of flyin' all over the place, and coppers see them through the window. This can't be seen, and there's enough light for any honest purpose. I say, Charters, we'd better put in some stickin'plaster for him in case he has to cut a pane out of a window. You take my advice, Ken, and try the scullery window first; that's the most vulnerable part of any house. You're wearin' a dark-blue suit, and that's all right…'
'Just a minute,' I interposed. 'What I want to know is, why the unnecessary camouflage? Instead of saying, `absolute burning imperative that you be butler,' why didn't you say burglar? What has my role as Robert Butler got to do with this?'
H.M. did not roar. He remained blinking steadily at me, turning over the jemmy in his hand.
'That's our second line of defence, son,' he said, 'in case anything goes wrong. I don't mean to minimize the risks. There's very, very nimble-minded people working against us, and the trouble is that we don't have a ghost of an idea what they're doin'. It's just possible they've laid some kind of trap. Out somewhere there're three people whose ideas or motives we don't know. First, there's Paul Hogenauer. Second, there's that apparently harmless professor of physics, Dr. Albert Keppel. Third, there's the elusive L. It may be that none of 'em has a dangerous purpose at all. Or, again, it's just possible that Hogenauer has laid some sort of trap for us — or whatever agent we send. It's just possible his goin' away to Bristol to-night is a blind. I don't say it's probable, but it's possible.'
'And I may walk into this trap?'
H.M. grunted. 'That's why I asked you to come here. There's plenty of smart lads who could do a neater job of jemmying a window or cavortin' on a drain-pipe, if that's all I wanted. But you met Hogenauer in the old days. You met him in the character of Robert Butler, a spy and a bitter enemy of England, and Hogenauer never forgets a face. So far as we know, he never knew any different about you. If by any chance this is a trap, you'll walk into it before you've done any damage. You can pretend to be an ally of his, you can pretend to be on his side — and you're the only one who can pretend that. You can get out of it before you're into it, if it is a trap. And you may be able to learn something.'
'Or walk into a bullet,' I said. 'Hogenauer seems to know a whole lot about us. Has it occurred to you that he may know all about me as well, and that he knew about me in my `Butler role?'
'Uh-huh,' said H.M., nodding rather vaguely. 'Sure, Ken; it was the first thing I thought of. But somehow… I move in mysterious ways of cussedness. You may have noticed it. I got plans at the back of my head; I see a move and jump or two on funny gambits, as Charters can tell you; oh, yes. And somehow I don't think you're in as much danger as you might be. I know I seem to be askin' an awful lot of you, especially at a time like this; and you'd be quite right to tell me to go and jump in the bay. But will you trust the old man?'
'Right,' I said. 'Let's get on with it. When do I start?'
'Good,' said Charters quietly. 'You'd better have something to eat first. It won't be dark until close on ten o'clock, but you'd better start about nine and reconnoitre the neighbourhood. Sergeant Davis wrote down Hogenauer's address for me somewhere: I think it's `The Larches,' Valley Road, Moreton Abbot. The servant, as I told you, will be going to see a girl and you'll have a clear road. You'll take a car, of course, but I don't need to tell you to park it some distance away from the house. Take Merrivale's car: or mine if you prefer it, unless Serpos has got it out now….'
H.M. seemed mildly disturbed.
