Inside the Lines (Biggers and Ritchie)/Chapter 5
CHAPTER V
A FERRET
CONSIDER the mental state of Mr. Billy Capper as he sank into a seat on the midnight suburban from Ramleh to Alexandria. Even to the guard, unused to particular observation of his passengers save as to their possible propensity for trying to beat their fares, the bundle of clothes surmounted by a rusty brown bowler which huddled under the sickly light of the second-class carriage bespoke either a candidate for a plunge off the quay or a "bloomer" returning from his wassailing. But the eyes of the man denied this latter hypothesis; sanity was in them, albeit the merciless sanity that refuses an alternative when fate has its victim pushed into a corner. So submerged was Capper under the flood of his own bitter cogitations that he had not noticed the other two passengers boarding the train at the little tiled station—a tall, quietly dressed white man and a Numidian with a cloak thrown over his white livery. The latter had faded like a shadow into the third-class carriage behind the one in which Capper rode.
Here was Capper—poor old Hardluck Billy Capper—floored again, and just when the tide of bad fortune was on the turn; so ran the minor strain of self-pity under the brown bowler. A failure once more, and through no fault of his own. No, no! Hadn't he been ready to deliver the goods? Hadn't he come all the way down here from Berlin, faithful to his pledge to Louisa, the girl in the Wilhelmstrasse, ready and willing to embark on that important mission of which he was to be told by Doctor Emil Koch? And what happens? Koch turns him into the street like a dog; threatens to have him before the military as a spy if he doesn't make himself scarce. Koch refuses even to admit he'd ever heard of the Wilhelmstrasse. Clever beggar! A jolly keen eye he's got for his own skin; won't take a chance on being betrayed into the hands of the English, even when he ought to see that a chap's honest when he comes and tells a straight story about losing that silly little bit of paper with his working number on it. What difference if he can't produce the ticket when he has the number pat on the tip of his tongue, and is willing to risk his own life to give that number to a stranger?
Back upon the old perplexity that had kept Capper's brain on strain ever since the first day aboard La Vendée—who had lifted his ticket, and when was it done? The man recalled, for the hundredth time, his awakening aboard the French liner—what a horror that first morning was, with the ratty little surgeon feeding a fellow aromatic spirits of ammonia like porridge! Capper, in this mood of detached review, saw himself painfully stretching out his arm from his bunk to grasp his stick the very first minute he was alone in the stateroom; the crooked handle comes off under his turning, and the white wisp of paper is stuck in the hollow of the stick. Blank paper!
Safe as safe could be had been that little square of paper Louisa had given him with his expense money, from the day he left Berlin until—when? To be sure, he had treated himself to a little of the grape in Paris and, maybe, in Marseilles; but his brain had been clear every minute. Oh, Capper would have sworn to that! The whole business of the disappearance of his Wilhelmstrasse ticket and the substitution of the blank was simply another low trick the Capper luck had played on him.
The train rushed through the dark toward the distant prickly coral bed of lights, and the whirligig of black despair churned under the brown bowler. No beginning, no end to the misery of it. Each new attempt to force a little light of hope into the blackness of his plight fetched up at the same dead wall—here was Billy Capper, hired by the Wilhelmstrasse, after having been booted out of the secret offices of England and Belgium—given a show for his white alley—and he couldn't move a hand to earn his new salary. Nor could he go back to Berlin, even though he dared return with confession of the stolen ticket; Berlin was no place for an Englishman right now, granting he could get there. No, he was in the backwash again—this time in this beastly half-caste city of Alexandria, and with—how much was it now?—with a beggarly fifteen pounds between himself and the beach.
Out of the ruck of Capper's sad reflections the old persistent call began to make itself heard before ever the train from Ramleh pulled into the Alexandria station. That elusive country of fountains, incense and rose dreams which can only be approached through the neck of a bottle spread itself before him alluringly, inviting him to forgetfulness. And Capper answered the call.
From the railroad station, he set his course through narrow villainous streets down to the district on Pharos, where the deep-water men of all the world gather to make vivid the nights of Egypt. Behind him was the faithful shadow, Cæsar, Doctor Koch's man. The Numidian trailed like a panther, slinking from cover to cover, bending his body as the big cat does to the accommodations of the trail's blinds.
Once Capper found himself in a blind alley, turned and strode out of it just in time to bump heavily into the unsuspected pursuer. Instantly a hem of the Numidian's cloak was lifted to screen his face, but not before the sharp eyes of the Englishman had seen and recognized it. A tart smile curled the corners of Capper's mouth as he passed on down the bazaar-lined street to the Tavern of Thermopylæ, at the next corner. So old Koch was taking precautions, eh? Well, Capper, for one, could hardly blame him; who wouldn't, under the circumstances?
The Tavern of Thermopylæ was built for the Billy Cappers of the world—a place of genial deviltry where every man's gold was better than his name, and no man asked more than to see the color of the stranger's money. Here was gathered as sweet a company of assassins as one could find from Port Said to a Honmoku, all gentle to fellows of their craft under the freemasonry of hard liquor. Greeks, Levantines, Liverpool lime-juicers from the Cape, leech-eyed Finns from a Russian's stoke-hole, tanned ivory runners from the forbidden lands of the African back country—all that made Tyre and Sidon infamous in Old Testament police records was represented there.
Capper called for an absinth dripper and established himself in a deserted corner of the smoke-filled room. There was music, of sorts, and singing; women whose eyes told strange stories, and whose tongues jumped nimbly over three or four languages, offered their companionship to those who needed company with their drink. But Billy Capper ignored the music and closed his ears to the sirens; he knew who was his best cup companion.
The thin green blood of the wormwood drip-dripped down on to the ice in Capper's glass, coloring it with a rime like moss. He watched it, fascinated, and when he sipped the cold sicky-sweet liquor he was eager as a child to see how the pictures the absinth drew on the ice had been changed by the draft. Sip—sip; a soothing numbness came to the tortured nerves. Sip—sip; the clouds of doubt and self-pity pressing down on his brain began to shred away. He saw things clearly now; everything was sharp and clear as the point of an icicle.
He reviewed, with new zest, his recent experiences, from the night he met Louisa in the Café Riche up to his interview with Doctor Koch. Louisa—that girl with the face of a fine animal and a heart as cold as carved amethyst; why had she been so willing to intercede for Billy Capper with her superiors in the Wilhelmstrasse and procure him a number and a mission to Alexandria? For his information regarding the Anglo-Belgian understanding? But she paid for that; the deal was fairly closed with three hundred marks. Did Louisa go further and list him in the Wilhelmstrasse out of the goodness of her heart, or for old memory's sake? Capper smiled wryly over his absinth. There was no goodness in Louisa's heart, and the strongest memory she had was how nearly Billy Capper had dragged her down with him in the scandal of the Lord Fisher letters.
How the thin green blood of the wormwood cleared the mind—made it leap to logical reasoning!
Why had Louisa instructed him to leave Marseilles by the steamer touching at Malta when a swifter boat scheduled to go to Alexandria direct was leaving the French port a few hours later? Was it that the girl intended he should get no farther than Malta; that the English there should
Capper laughed like the philosopher who has just discovered the absolute of life's futility. The ticket—his ticket from the Wilhelmstrasse which Louisa had procured for him; Louisa wanted that for other purposes, and used him as the dummy to obtain it. She wanted it before he could arrive at Malta—and she got it before he left Marseilles. Even Louisa, the wise, had played without discounting the Double on the wheel—fate's percentage in every game; she could not know the Vendée would be warned from lingering at Malta because of the exigency of war, and that Billy Capper would reach Alexandria, after all.
The green logic in the glass carried Capper along with mathematical exactness of deduction. As he sipped, his mind became a thing detached and, looking down from somewhere high above earth, reviewed the blundering course of Billy Capper's body from Berlin to Alexandria—the poor deluded body of a dupe. With this certitude of logic came the beginnings of resolve. Vague at first and intangible, then, helped by the absinth to focus, was this new determination. Capper nursed it, elaborated on it, took pleasure in forecasting its outcome, and viewing himself in the new light of a humble hero. It was near morning, and the Tavern of Thermopylæ was well-nigh deserted when Capper paid his score and blundered through the early-morning crowd of mixed races to his hotel. His legs were quite drunk, but his mind was coldly and acutely sober.
"Very drunk, master," was the report Cæsar, the Numidian, delivered to Doctor Koch at the Ramleh villa. The doctor, believing Cæsar to be a competent judge, chuckled in his beard. Cæsar was called off from the trail.
Across the street from Doctor Koch's home on Queen's Terrace was the summer home of a major of fusileers, whose station was up the Nile. But this summer it was not occupied. The major had hurried his family back to England at the first mutterings of the great war, and he himself had to stick by his regiment up in the doubtful Sudan country. Like Doctor Koch*s place, the major's yard was surrounded by a high wall, over which the fronds of big palms and flowered shrubs draped themselves. The nearest villa, aside from the Kochs' across the street, was a hundred yards away. At night an arc light, set about thirty feet from Doctor Koch's gate, marked all the road thereabouts with sharp blocks of light and shadow. One lying close atop the wall about the major's yard, screened by the palms and the heavy branches of some night-blooming ghost flower, could command a perfect view of Doctor Koch's gateway without being himself visible.
At least, so Billy Capper found it on the night following his visit to the German physician's and his subsequent communion with himself at the Tavern of Thermopylæ. Almost with the falling of the dark, Capper had stepped off the train at Ramleh station, ferried himself by boat down the canal that passed behind the major's home, after careful reconnoitering, discovered that the tangle of wild-wood about the house was not guarded by a watchman, and had so achieved his position of vantage on top of the wall directly opposite the gateway of No. 32. He was stretched flat. Through the spaces between the dry fingers of a palm leaf he could command a good view of the gate and of the road on either side. Few pedestrians passed below him; an automobile or two puffed by ; but in the main, Queen's Terrace was deserted and Capper was alone. It was a tedious vigil. Capper had no reliance except his instinct of a spy familiar with spy's work to assure that he would be rewarded for his pains. Some sixth sense in him had prompted him to come thither, sure in the promise that the night would not be misspent. A clock somewhere off in the odorous dark struck the hour twice, and Capper fidgeted. The hard stone he was lying on cramped him.
The sound of footsteps on the flagged walk aroused momentary interest. He looked out through his screen of green and saw a tall well-knit figure of a man approach the opposite gate, stop and ring the bell. Instantly Capper tingled with the hunting fever of his trade. In the strong light from the arc he could study minutely the face of the man at the gate—smoothly shaven, slightly gaunt and with thin lips above a strong chin. It was a striking face—one easily remembered. The gate opened; beyond it Capper saw, for an instant, the white figure of the Numidian he had bumped into at the alley's mouth. The gate closed on both.
Another weary hour for the ferret on the wall, then something happened that was reward enough for cramped muscles and taut nerves. An automobile purred up to the gate; out of it hopped two men, while a third, tilted over like one drunk, remained on the rear seat of the tonneau. One rang the bell. The two before the gate fidgeted anxiously for it to be opened. Capper paid not so much heed to them as to the half-reclining figure in the machine. It was in strong light. Capper saw, with a leap of his heart, that the man in the machine was clothed in the khaki service uniform of the British army—an officer's uniform he judged by the trimness of its fitting, though he could not see the shoulder straps. The unconscious man was bareheaded and one side of his face was darkened by a broad trickle of blood from the scalp.
When the gate opened, there were a few hurried words between the Numidian and the two who had waited. All three united in lifting an inert figure from the car and carrying it quickly through the gate. Consumed with the desire to follow them into the labyrinth of the doctor's yard, yet not daring, Capper remained plastered to the wall.
Captain Woodhouse, sitting in the consultation room with the doctor, heard the front door open and the scuffle of burdened feet in the hall. Doctor Koch hopped nimbly to the folding doors and threw them back. First, the Numidian's broad back, then, the bent shoulders of two other men, both illy dressed, came into view. Between them they carried the form of a man in officer's khaki. Woodhouse could not check a fluttering of the muscles in his cheeks; this was a surprise to him; the doctor had given no hint of it.
"Good—good!" clucked Koch, indicating that they should lay their burden on the operating chair. "Any trouble?"
"None in the least, Herr Doktor," the larger of the two white men answered. "At the corner of the warehouse near the docks, where it is dark—he was going early to the Princess Mary, and"
"Yes, a tap on the head—so?" Koch broke in, casting a quick glance toward where Captain Woodhouse had risen from his seat. A shrewd appraising glance it was, which was not lost on Woodhouse. He stepped forward to join the physician by the side of the figure on the operating chair.
"Our man, Doctor?" he queried casually.
"Your name sponsor," Koch answered, with a satisfied chuckle; "the original Captain Woodhouse of his majesty's signal service, formerly stationed at Wady Halfa."
"Quite so," the other answered in English. Doctor Koch clapped him on the shoulder.
"Perfect, man! You do the Englishman from the book. It will fool them all."
Woodhouse shrugged his shoulders in deprecation. Koch cackled on, as he began to lay out sponge and gauze bandages on the glass-topped table by the operating chair:
"You see, I did not tell you of this because—well, that fellow Capper's coming last night looked bad; even your explanation did not altogether convince. So I thought we'd have this little surprise for you. If you were an Englishman you'd show it in the face of this—you couldn't help it. Eh?"
"Possibly not," the captain vouchsafed. "But what is your plan. Doctor? What are you going to do with this Captain Woodhouse to insure his being out of the way while I am in Gibraltar. I hope no violence—unless necessary."
"Nothing more violent than a violent headache and some fever," Koch answered. He was busy fumbling in the unconscious man's pockets. From the breast pocket of the uniform jacket he withdrew a wallet, glanced at its contents, and passed it to the captain.
"Your papers, Captain—the papers of transfer from Wady Halfa to Gibraltar. Money, too. I suppose we'll have to take that, also, to make appearances perfect—robbery following assault on the wharves."
Woodhouse pocketed the military papers in the wallet and laid it down, the money untouched. The two white aids of Doctor Koch, who were standing by the folding doors, eyed the leather folder hungrily. Koch, meanwhile, had stripped off the jacket from the Englishman and was rolling up the right sleeve of his shirt. That done, he brought down from the top of the glass instrument case a wooden rack containing several test tubes, stoppled with cotton. One glass tube he lifted out of the rack and squinted at its clouded contents against the light.
"A very handy little thing—very handy." Koch was talking to himself as much as to Woodhouse. "A sweet little product of the Niam Niam country down in Belgian Kongo. Natives think no more of it than they would of a water fly's bite; but the white man is"
"A virus of some kind?" the other guessed.
"Of my own isolation," Doctor Koch answered proudly. He scraped the skin on the victim's arm until the blood came, then dipped an ivory spatula into the tube of murky gelatine and transferred what it brought up to the raw place in the flesh.
"The action is very quick, and may be violent," he continued. "Our friend here won't recover consciousness for three days, and he will be unable to stand on his feet for two weeks, at least—dizziness, intermittent fever, clouded memory; he'll be pretty sick."
"But not too sick to communicate with others," Woodhouse suggested. "Surely"
"Maybe not too sick, but unable to communicate with others," Doctor Koch interrupted, with a booming laugh. "This time to-morrow night our friend will be well out on the Libyan Desert, with some ungentle Bedouins for company. He's bound for Fezzan—and it will be a long way home without money. Who knows? Maybe three months."
Very deftly Koch bound up the abrasion on the Englishman's arm with gauze, explaining as he worked that the man's desert guardians would have instructions to remove the bandages before he recovered his faculties. There would be nothing to tell the luckless prisoner more than that he had been kidnaped, robbed and carried away by tribesmen—a not uncommon occurrence in lower Egypt. Koch completed his work by directing his aids to strip off the rest of the unconscious man's uniform and clothe him in a nondescript civilian garb that Cæsar brought into the consultation room from the mysterious upper regions of the house.
"Exit Captain Woodhouse of the signal service," the smiling doctor exclaimed when the last button of the misfit jacket had been flipped into its buttonhole, "and enter Captain Woodhouse of the Wilhelmstrasse." Turning, he bowed humorously to the lean-faced man beside him. He nodded his head at Cæsar; the latter dived into a cupboard at the far end of the room and brought out a squat flask and glasses, which he passed around. When the liquor had been poured. Doctor Koch lifted his glass and squinted through it with the air of a gentle satyr.
"Gentlemen, we drink to what will happen soon on the Rock of Gibraltar!" All downed the toast gravely. Then the master of the house jerked his head toward the unconscious man on the operating chair. Cæsar and the two white men lifted the limp body and started with it to the door. Doctor Koch preceding them to open doors. The muffled chug-chugging of the auto at the gate sounded almost at once.
The doctor and Number Nineteen Thirty-two remained together in the consultation room for a few minutes, going over, in final review, the plans that the latter was to put into execution at the great English stronghold on the Rock. The captain looked at his watch, found the hour late, and rose to depart. Doctor Koch accompanied him to the gate, and stood with him for a minute under the strong light from the near-by arc.
"You go direct to the Princess Mary?" he asked.
"Direct to the Princess Mary," the other answered. "She is to sail at five o'clock."
"Then God guard you, my friend, on—your great adventure." They clasped hands, and the gate closed behind the doctor.
A shadow skipped from the top of the wall about the major's house across the road. A shadow dogged the footsteps of the tall well-knit man who strode down the deserted Queen's Terrace toward the tiled station by the tracks. A little more than an hour later, the same shadow flitted up the gangplank of the Princess Mary at her berth. When the big P. & O. liner pulled out at dawn, she carried among her saloon passengers one registered as "C. G. Woodhouse, Capt. Sig. Service," and in her second cabin a "William Capper."