The Chronicles of Addington Peace/The Story of Amaroff the Pole
I
THE STORY OF AMAROFF THE POLE
“You may think yourself an artist,” wrote my uncle, “but I call you a silly young fool.”
I remembered the sentence and the reading of it well enough, though time has not stood idle since that September evening of the year 1892. From the point of view of Bradford, my uncle might be right; but what did he know, I argued, of the higher ideal which I had chosen, preferring the development of my artistic sense to the mere accumulation of money that I could not spend? Where was his joy of life—he who spent his days in the whirr of wheels and the fog of many chimneys? How could it compare with mine in the ancient peace of the eighteenth-century house that lay under the towers that crowned the ancient abbey at Westminster? I looked around me at the delicate tapestries that I had brought from Florence to my London rooms; at the glowing Fragonards—souvenirs of my year of artistic study in Paris; at the Dresden groups redolent of old Saxony. Was I the fool or my uncle George? There seemed to me no doubt about it. It was plainly Uncle George.
Yet the letter had unsettled me. I opened the swing doors that led to my studio, switched on the light, and stepped from easel to easel, examining my half-finished work with a growing dissatisfaction. Were they indeed merely the daubs of a wealthy amateur? I loitered back to my sitting-room in a sulky depression, and had picked up an art paper, when there came a tapping at the door, and the grizzled head of old Jacob Hendry came peering in. A perfect servant was old Hendry, once sergeant of infantry, and now a combination of cook, valet, and housemaid, who kept my rooms in spotless order, grilled a steak to a turn, was a fair hand with a needle, and spent his spare time in producing the most inartistic wood carving I have ever seen.
“Well, and what is it?” I asked him; for he seemed in some hesitation.
“I beg your pardon, Mr. Phillips, sir,” he said, “but there's a young man would like to see you. A most respectable young man, sir, as lodges above us on the third floor, but”
“Go on, Jacob, go on.”
“The fact is, sir, he's from the Yard.”
“The Yard! What Yard?”
“Scotland Yard, sir, where the detectives come from.”
And where I wish to Heaven they would remain, thought I.
This intrusion was simply insufferable. I had a mind to refuse the man admittance.
“'Is boots is quite clean,” said Jacob, entirely mistaking my hesitation. “'E 'as wiped 'em on the mat. I saw 'im.”
“Oh, show him in.”
“The person, sir, of the name of Inspector Peace,” said Hendry, swinging open the door.
He was a tiny slip of a fellow, of about five and thirty years of age. A stubble of brown hair, a hard, clean-shaven mouth, and a confident chin—such was my impression. He took one quick look at me, and then waited, with his eyes on the carpet and his head a trifle tilted over the right shoulder.
“I fear that I have taken a great liberty, Mr. Phillips,” he said, in a very smooth and civil manner. “But I had an idea that you would help me, and time was of importance.”
“Well, and what is it?”
“You have many friends amongst the foreign artists here in London. You attend their concerts and sometimes even their little dances. We are near neighbours, you see,” he concluded, with a slight bow, that was at once an apology and an explanation.
“I am flattered by the interest you have taken in my movements.”
“Two hours ago,” he continued cheerfully, “a body was found in a passage off Leman Street, Stepney—a body which we cannot identify. The man was of good position, a sculptor, and, I believe, a Pole. A cab is waiting at the door. It is late, I know, Mr. Phillips; it cannot fail to be a great personal inconvenience; but will you drive down with me and take a look at him?”
“Certainly not.”
He saw that I considered his proposal an impertinence, for he hesitated a moment, regarding me with an air of depression.
“It has stopped raining,” he said, “and the cab has most comfortable cushions. I noticed a fur coat in the hall which can be slipped on in a moment. May I fetch it for you?”
“You merely waste time, Mr. Peace,” I told him, “I will have nothing to do with an affair in which I am nowise concerned.”
“This sculptor may be an acquaintance of your own,” he said gravely; “and while we are arguing, his murderers may escape.”
“Murderers?”
“Yes, sir; murderers! The man has been strangled and robbed.”
The position was most embarrassing. He asked me to go into a part of London that I had always carefully avoided. It was sufficient to know that filth, immorality, and crime exist without personally inspecting the muck-heap. Yet there he stood, his head on one side, staring at my toes like an inquisitive terrier, and my arguments faded before his stolidity. Why had Hendry ever let him in? I should certainly speak to the old rascal about his
“Well, Mr. Phillips.”
“If I agree to go, will you see to it that I am not again troubled in this matter?” I answered sulkily enough. “For I will not be a witness or a juryman or anything like that, you understand?”
“Certainly. I will see that you are not further molested.”
“Then, in the name of common sense, let us get it over as quickly as possible,” I said, kicking off my slippers and ringing the bell for my boots.
Big Ben was striking eleven as our hansom trotted down the long Embankment with its lights winking on the rushing tide below. Past the great restaurants of pleasure, glowing with shaded lamps from the windows of all their balconies; into the silent city where the tall offices of the day lay like deserted palaces under the moon; over macadam, over clattering asphalte, over greasy wood pavement; so we journeyed till of a sudden we dropped from wealth to destitution, from solitude to babble, from the West to the East. Costers bawling their wares under spouting flares, fringed the sidewalks along which jostled the chattering masses of the poor. The section was largely foreign. The patches of colour in some Italian shawl, the long coats and peaked headgear of some moujik, the clatter of the dialects seemed all the stranger from the sullen London background of mean shops, dingy lodgings, and low beer-houses. For, in the shadows of that underworld of the great metropolis, sodden faces, guttural oaths, dingy rags, the blow that precedes the word, are the manifestations of the native born.
In a side street the cab drew to a standstill. It was the mortuary, the inspector told me. A young policeman at the door touched his hat, and led the way down a passage to a bare stone chamber. On a slab in the centre the body lay with an elderly man in ill-fitting clothes bending over it. He looked up as we entered, and nodded to the inspector.
“You were quite right, Peace,” he said cheerfully; “chloroform first, strangling afterwards.”
“They took no risks, Dr. Chappie.”
“They made a clean job of it,” said the elderly man, looking down at the slab with his thumbs in his waistcoat-pockets. “Never saw neater work since—well, since I was invalided home from India.”
“Thugs?”
“Yes; they did it nigh as well as a Thug in regular practice.”
The callous brutality of the conversation filled me with disgust. I turned away, leaning against the wall with a feeling of nausea.
“And now, if I may trouble you, Mr. Phillips, will you look at this poor fellow, and see if you can recognize him?” said Peace.
I knew him well enough. The black beard, the thin, hawk nose, the high and noble forehead were not easily forgotten. Talman introduced me to him at the Art Club's Reception in July, whispering that he was a Pole and a neighbour of his—a deuced queer fish, though a clever one. He had exhibited a bust of Nero at the Academy, which attracted much attention.
“And his name?” asked the inspector.
“Amaroff. I believe him to be from Poland; that is about all I know of him.”
“How did you come to meet him?”
I told him of my introduction. Would I, he asked, give him Talman's address? Most certainly—No. 4, Harden Place, off the King's Road, Chelsea. I had no objection whatever to Talman being roused at one in the morning. By all means let the old rascal be turned out of bed and cross-examined. His language would be a revelation to the police—it would, really.
The inspector left me on the doorstep for a few minutes, while he whispered to two shabbily dressed men who lounged out of the darkness, and disappeared with the same lack of ostentation. Then we entered our cab, which had waited, and trotted westward, the very air growing clearer, as it seemed to me, when the underworld of poverty fell away behind us. It was some time before I spoke, and then it was to ask for a solution to certain puzzles that had been forming in my brain.
“You said he had been robbed?” I began.
“Yes, Mr. Phillips. They had gone through his pockets with every attention to detail.”
“Then how did you know he was a sculptor?”
“He had been called away in a hurry. There was modelling clay in his finger-nails, and a splash of plaster on his right trouser leg. It was quite simple, as you see.”
His reply was ingenious, and I liked the inspector the better for it. The man had something more in him than a civil tongue and a pleasing manner.
“Tell me—what else did you learn?”
“That he was murdered in a place with a sanded floor, probably at no great distance from Leman Street, seeing that they carried him there on a coster's barrow.”
“I am not a reporter,” I said. “I do not want guess-work.”
“I shall probably be able to prove my words in twenty-four hours.”
“And why not now?”
“There are good reasons.”
“Oh, very well,” I said sulkily; and we drove on through the night in silence.
He left me at my door amid polite assurances that I should not again be troubled in the matter. I told him quite frankly that I was very glad to hear it.
I did not sleep more than eight hours that night, and was quite unfitted for work in the morning. I roamed about my studio with nerves on edge. I cursed Peace and all his doings. Even the papers gave me no further information of this exasperating business, being loaded with the preparations for the Czar's reception in Paris, which was due in two days. In the end I sank so far as to send old Jacob up to the inspector's rooms for the latest hews; but he had been out since daybreak.
About twelve I wandered off to the club. The sight of Talman was a very present joy to me. He was engaged in denouncing the police to a select circle, choosing as his text that the Englishman's house in his castle. I offered my sincere sympathy when he told me that he had been invaded at one in the morning by inquiring detectives. I suggested that he should write to the Times about it. He said he had already done so. Incidentally he mentioned that Amaroff's address had been No. 21, Harden Place.
I lunched at the little table by the window; but it was in the smoking-room afterwards that the idea occurred to me. I fought against it for some time, but the temptation increased upon consideration. Finally I yielded, and told the waiter to call a cab. I would myself have a look at the dead man's studio.
I dismissed the hansom at the turning off King's Road, and walked down Harden Place on foot. It was an eddy in the rush of London improvement—a pool of silence in its roaring traffic. There were trees in the little gardens. The golds and browns of the withering leaves peeped and rustled over the old brick walls. Several studios I noticed—it was evidently an artists' quarter—before I stopped in front of No. 21.
The studio—a fair-sized barn of modern brick—fronted on the street. The double doors through which a sculptor's larger work may pass were flanked by a little side door painted a staring and most objectionable green. On the right the roof of a red-tiled shed crept up to long windows under the eaves. The side door stood ajar—a most urgent invitation to my curiosity. After all, I argued, a studio remains a place where the strict rules of etiquette may be avoided, even though its owner be dead. And so, without troubling farther in the matter, I pushed the door gently open, and walked into a short passage, the further end of which was barred with heavy curtains of faded plush. Beyond them I could hear a whisper of voices. I drew back the edge of a curtain and peeped within.
In the centre of the big room was a tall pedestal upon which was set the bust of Nero, which had won no small measure of fame for poor Amaroff in that year's Academy. Under the proud and merciless features of the Roman Emperor stood Inspector Peace—smoking a cigarette and talking to a big fellow with a thick black beard.
A couple of men kneeling at their feet were replacing a mass of loose papers in the drawers of a roller-top desk that had been pulled some distance from the wall
I was just about to announce myself, when me of the men knocked over a brass candlestick which stood on the desk, so that it rolled to the further side. With a grunt of annoyance, he stepped leisurely round and dropped on his knees to recover it. Once out of eight of his companions, however, he whipped out a square of wax from his pocket, and with extraordinary rapidity took an impression from a key that he had kept concealed in his hand. It was all over in five seconds, and from the shelter the desk gave to him, no one but myself could have been the wiser. He rose, replaced the candlestick, and continued his work.
Whether the fellow had played his companion a trick or not, I had no desire to be caught acting the spy. So, pulling the curtains aside, I walked into the room. They all turned quickly upon me, the black-bearded man staring hard as if attempting to recall my face. But Peace was the first to speak.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Phillips,” he said, as if I were a visitor he had expected. “You are just in time to drive me back. Have you a cab waiting?”
“No.” I hesitated;
“It's of no consequence. We can find another at the top of the street. And now, Mr. Nicolin,” he continued, turning to the big man, who had never taken his eyes off me, “are you quite satisfied, or do you wish your men to make a further search?”
“No, Mr. Inspector,” he answered, with a heavy foreign accent, “we are quite content. Noding more is necessary.”
“Shall you be wanting to come again?”
“No—for us it is sufficient. It is for you to continue, Mr. Inspector. You tink you will catch these men who kill him, hein?”
“We shall try,” said Peace, with a modest droop of the eyes.
“Ach—but where can there be certainty in our lives? Come now, my children, let us be going. Alexandre, you have the door-key of the studio; give him to the inspector here.”
So it was the door-key, thought I, of which Mr. Alexandre obtained a memento behind the roller-top desk!
Peace gave a polite good-bye to his companions on the step, locked up the little green door, and then started down the street at my side.
I had no business to come poking my nose into your affairs,” I said. “Anything you say I shall thoroughly deserve.”
“Don't apologize,” he smiled. “I was pleased to see you.”
“And why?”
“You can do better things than remain a wealthy dilettante, Mr. Phillips. You are too broad in the shoulders, too clear in the head, for living in the world that is dead. Such little incidents as these—they drag you out of the shell you are building about you. That is why I was pleased to see you. I have spoken plainly—are you offended?”
“Oh no,” I said, waving my stick to a passing hansom, though I did not refer again to the topic which I foresaw was likely to become personally offensive to me.
He sat back in his corner of the cab, filling his pipe with dextrous fingers, while I watched him out of the corner of my eye. When it was well alight, he began again on a new subject.
“London's a queer place,” he said, “though perhaps you have not had the time to find it out. There are foreign colonies, with their own religions and clubs and politics, working their way through life just as if they were in Odessa or Hamburg or Milan. There are refugees—Heaven knows how many, for we do not—that have fled before all the despotisms that succeeded and all the revolutions that failed from Siam to the Argentine. Tolstoi fanatics, dishonest presidents, anarchists, royalists, Armenians, Turks, Carlists, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia—a finer collection than even America itself can show. On the Continent—well, we should be running them in, and they would be throwing bombs. But here no one troubles them so long as they pay rent and taxes, and keep their hands out of each other's pockets or from each other's throats. They understand us, too, and stop playing at assassins and conspirators. But once in a while habit is too strong for them, and something happens.”
“As it happened to Amaroff?”
“Yes—as it happened to Amaroff.”
“It was a political crime?”
“Yes.”
“And the reasons?”
“They have the advantage of simplicity. Amaroff was a member of the Russian secret-service, detailed to mix with and observe the Nihilist refugees. The Czar enters Paris in two days, and when the Czar travels the political police of all the capitals are kept on the run. I suppose Amaroff showed an excess of zeal that made his absence from London desirable. Anyway, he was found dead, and the Russians reasonably conclude it is the Nihilists who killed him."
“Who were those men in the studio?”
“The big fellow was Nicolin, the head of the Russian service over here. I don't know a better man in his profession nor one with fewer scruples. The other two were assistants. They came down to the Yard this morning with a request that they might search the studio for certain private papers which Amaroff had and which belonged to them. So we fixed the appointment into which you have just walked.”
“And they finished their search?”
“You heard them say so.”
“Exactly; but why, then, did they want an impression of the studio key?”
He turned upon me with a sudden impatience in his eyes.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
I told him of my arrival, and what I had seen from my post behind the curtains of the doorway. He did not speak when I had finished, but sat, puffing at his short pipe, and staring out over the horse's ears. So we arrived at our door.
“If you have further news to-night will you call in before going to bed?” I asked him as we stood on the pavement.
“I cannot promise you that I have some important inquiries to make in the East End this evening, and I do not know when I shall return.”
I suppose I looked depressed at his answer; indeed the prospect of a lonely evening in my rooms with such a mystery in course of solution outside, seemed oddly distasteful to me.
“It is a rough district, as you know,” he said, watching me; “but would you care to come along?”
“There is nothing I should like better,” I answered simply.
“Well—it's against the regulations; but they allow me some license. Be ready at nine, and I will call for you. Wear old clothes, a cap and a scarf round your neck to hide your collar. Is that understood?”
“Yes,” I said, and so it was settled between us.
We were punctual in our meeting, and trotted eastward over the roads we had covered on the previous day. When we stopped it was at a narrow rift in a wall of mean dwellings. We dismissed the cab and threaded our way down the alley, which opened out upon a miserable square. The houses that surrounded it had once been of some pretension. In a simpler age merchants had doubtless lived there, men who owned the tall ships that had lain in the river near by. But now the porticos had crumbled, the iron railings had bent and rusted, the plaster had fallen in speckled patches from the walls. In the centre a few ancient trees still dragged on a disconsolate existence. It was a silent place where wheeled traffic never came. And when, through an upper window, a woman suddenly poured forth shrill abuse upon a drunken man clinging to the railings, each oath rang loudly in the furtive silence.
As we paused at the mouth of the alley, a tall man, with a drooping yellow moustache, brushed by us; and when we turned into a beer-house it the corner he followed us, standing a little apart in an angle of the bar.
There were half a dozen men and women—of the life wreckage of the great city—sitting on the benches; but before the inspector was served with the drinks he ordered, they had whispered one to another and melted away. As the last one slunk through the door, Peace beckoned to the tall man, who joined us.
“Well, Jackson,”«he said, “you can't hide your light under a bushel in Stepney, that's certain.”
“I'm afraid not, sir,” he grinned. “Leastways not in Maiden Square.”
“Well, have you found the placed? Oh, that is all right,” for the man had glanced at me with a brief suspicion. “This is Mr. Phillips, who has been of much service to me in our little affair; let me introduce you to Serjeant Jackson, Mr. Phillips.”
I shook hands with the serjeant, who said that he would take a glass of beer.
“And the place?” asked Peace, when we had seated ourselves on a corner bench out of earshot of the man behind the bar—a bottle-nosed ruffian, who watched us furtively as he rinsed the dirty glasses.
“That's the address, sir,” said the serjeant, handing his superior a crumpled sheet of paper.
“A club, is it?” he said, glancing up in his quick, bird-like way. “And what sort of a club?”
“Foreign, sir. They call themselves social democrats, but our special branch men tell me that a full half of the crowd are anarchists, and such rats as that. I think it must be so, for Nicolin and his Russians have had the place under close observation for weeks. And you know what that means, sir.”
“Yes, I know what that means.”
“Amaroff was not a member, but used to drop in there from time to time. He was very thick with the man who runs the place, Greatman, as he calls himself. They tell me that Greatman sat as a model for some statue he was doing, back in July. It must have been a funny sort of statue, for Greatman's a weedy little Pole, and drinks like a fish.”
For some time the inspector sat in silence, drawing circles on the floor with the point of the light cane he carried. The bar-tender dropped a glass, swore, and then, with a stare at us, retreated into a little cage he had at the back of his domain. Doubtless the presence of detectives was no incentive to trade in the bars of Maiden Square.
“This Greatman—what more do you know of him?”
“We have had nothing against him before; but all the same, it's his private room that has the sanded floor.”
The inspector's prophecy of the previous night came back to me with a sudden remembrance: “Amaroff was murdered in a room with a sanded floor, probably at no great distance from Leman Street, seeing that they carried him there in a coster's barrow.” I began to understand the morbid significance of the private room in this little foreign club. We were drawing nearer to our garner; the scent was growing stronger. Peace leant a little forward, with a twist in his jaw that raised a ripple of muscles under the skin.
“Continue, if you please,” he said.
“It's at the rear of the club, and there is a back staircase to a yard behind, where costers store their barrows when not in use. It fits in with what you told us to inquire for, don't it, sir?”
“Yes.”
The inspector's stick recommenced its interlacing circles on the floor; and we sat and watched, as if thereby he were disentangling his sordid story. So still were we all that the bar-tender poked his luminous nose from his cage in the hope that we had gone. He withdrew it with remarks on the police force which were distinctly audible, and opposed to the complimentary. Suddenly the inspector turned to me with a motion of half-apology, as if at the neglect of a guest.
“There are times, Mr. Phillips,” he said, “when evidence runs in absurd contradictions. Observe the present case, in which you are so good as to interest yourself. We have it from the Russian police that Amaroff is their man, and that in their opinion—they being well qualified to judge—he was murdered by Nihilists. We now learn that he was apparently on intimate terms with Nihilists, and we have good reason to believe that he was strangled in one of their clubs. What do you gather from that?”
“They discovered his treachery, and took an excusable revenge,” said I.
“A sound conclusion. And now let us suppose that Amaroff was not a police spy at all; being, in fact, a dangerous Nihilist. What then?”
“Why set yourself such a puzzle?”
“Not for amusement,” he said, with his quiet smile. “And now I propose a little experiment. You must introduce us to this club, Jackson; the door-keeper will know you, and pass us in. Afterwards you will go to the back entrance in the yard you spoke of, and wait. It should be easy to conceal yourself.”
“Yes, sir. Am I to stop Greatman if he comes out?”
“No. Stop nobody. We had better be going.”
The square lay desolate and lonely in the bleak moonlight. We crossed it, and stopped at a house in the shadows of the farther side. At our knock a slide flew back, and, in the gush of light, a hairy face examined us curiously.
“Vat is et?” he said.
The serjeant stepped forward and whispered. The man was sufficiently satisfied, for he dropped the slide at once, and the door swung back to admit us; the hairy-faced porter bowing a welcome in polite submission. The inspector led the way up the stairs, and I followed at his heels. The serjeant had disappeared.
It was a broad, low room in which we found ourselves, the rafters of the roof unhidden by the plaster of a ceiling. Round the walls on benches ranged behind tables a dozen men sat smoking and drinking. The chatter of talk faded away as we entered. In silence they stared at us, calmly, judiciously, without fear or curiosity. I could not have imagined a more composed and resolute company. I felt that I carried myself awkwardly, as an impertinent intruder should; but the inspector sauntered across the room to a bar on the further side as calmly as if he were the oldest and most valued member in the club.
A pale-faced man with a stained and yellow beard rose from his seat behind the glasses. His eyes were fixed on Peace with, a weak, pathetic expression like a dog in pain.
“Good evening, Mr. Greatman,” said the inspector, “Can I have a word with you?”
“Yes, sir, if you will kindly step into my private room,” he answered in excellent English, opening a hatch in the bar. “This is the way, sir, if you will follow me.”
We walked after him down a short passage and stopped before the darkness of an open door. A spurt of a match and the gas jet flared upon a bare chamber, hung with a gaudy paper and furnished with half a dozen wooden chairs set round a deal table in the centre. In place of a carpet, our feet grated upon a smooth sprinkling of that grey sand which may still be found in old-fashioned inns. It was here then, if the detectives were not mistaken, that this crime had found a climax, this sordid murder not thirty hours old.
“If you would like a fire, gentlemen,” suggested Greatman, “I can easily fetch 'some coals.”
“Pray do not trouble yourself,” said the inspector, politely. “My name is Peace, of the Criminal Investigation Department, and I called to inquire if you can tell me anything concerning the murder of the sculptor, Amaroff.”
“I know nothing.”
“That is strange, seeing that he was strangled in this very room.”
“Here?” cried the Pole, with a stare of unbelief changing into sudden terror. “Here—in my room.”
“So I believe,” said Peace.
The man swayed for an instant, grasping at the back of a chair, and then dropped to the ground, moaning, his face covered with his hands. In that crouching figure before us was written the extremity of despair.
“Come, come, Greatman, pull yourself together,” said the inspector, tapping him kindly on the shoulder. “If you are innocent, there is no need to make all this fuss.”
“It was Nicolin who lied to me,” he cried, looking up with bewildered eyes.
“Very probably,” said Peace, “it is a habit with him."
“Yet it was I, miserable that I am, who made the meeting between them. Before Heaven, it was with the innocence of a child. If those my comrades of the club but knew”
He hesitated, his eyes searching the room in sudden terror.
“Oblige me by seeing that we have no comrades already at the keyhole, Mr. Phillips,” said Peace.
There was no one at the door; no one in the dark passage; and when I returned I found that Peace had lifted the caretaker to a chair, where he sat in a crumpled heap.
“You can trust us,” the detective was saying. “Believe me, Greatman, it will be best for yourself that you hide nothing.”
And so with many fierce cries and protestations, this poor creature began his story.
It was Nicolin, it seemed, who had discovered that Greatman, the caretaker of the Brutus Club, was one and the same with the forger, Ivan Kroll, of Odessa, who had been wanted by the Russian police for close upon twelve years. But having a shrewd head on his shoulders, Nicolin made no immediate use of his knowledge. For forgery a man might be extradited from England. Once in Russia the charge would be altered to nihilism, and then—Siberia. It was not pleasant for the caretaker of a nihilist club to be at the mercy of a black-bearded spy lounging on the step outside. “It was that which drove me to the brandy;” said poor Greatman, alias Kroll.
About the end of August there began, he continued, a duel of wits between the two men, Amaroff and Nicolin, the reasons and causes of which did not, if he might be permitted to say, concern us. Nicolin's career was dependent on his success. For him, failure spelt permanent disgrace. Yet it was Amaroff who was playing with his opponent as a cat with a mouse, confusing and surprising him at every turn, driving him, indeed, when time grew pressing, into desperate measures. At the last he formed a plan, did Nicolin, a scheme worthy of his most cunning brain.
“This, then, he did,” ended the poor caretaker. “He came to me—I who had so great love and honour for Amaroff, my friend, I whom he had turned from crime and aided to earn a wage in honesty—he came to me and he says: 'Kroll, in my pocket is a warrant that will send you back to the snow places in the East; do you fear me, my good Kroll?' And I feared him. 'See, now,' he said, 'we desire to see your friend Amaroff for a little talk. We cannot harm him here in this mad country. Contrive a trick, bring him into your private room behind the bar. Give us the key of the yard door that we may come secretly to him—and afterwards you will hear no more of Siberia from me. Do you consent?'
“Gentlemen, I believed him, also having fear of the snow places; and I consented.
“So Amaroff answered my call, and with some excuse I left him in this room. It was at a time when few members were in the club—about seven of the clock. And that, as I live, is all I have to tell. I waited at my seat behind the bar. I saw nothing, heard nothing—and at last when I went to my room, behold it was empty! I tried to suspect no wrong—but I did not sleep that night. In the morning I saw in the papers that Amaroff, my friend, was dead, and how he died I could not tell.”
“So Nicolin won the game,” suggested Peace, softly. “And there will be no regrettable incident when the Czar enters Paris the day after to-morrow.”
“Of that I have no knowledge,” said Greatman; but I saw a sudden resolution shine in his face that seemed to put new heart into the man.
“Well, Mr. Phillips,” said the inspector, turning upon me with a warning quiver of the left eyelid, “it is time we were on the move. If we are to meet Nicolin at the studio by seven to-morrow morning, we must get to bed early.”
“Certainly,” I said. I was rather out of my depth, but I take myself this credit that I did not show it.
“Then do you search the studio to-morrow?” asked Greatman.
“Yes—it has been arranged."
“But will you not first arrest this Nicolin, this murderer?”
“My dear Mr. Greatman,” said the inspector, “you have told us your story, and I thank you for your confidence. But I advise you now to leave things alone. I will see justice done—don't be afraid about that. For the rest, please to keep a silent tongue in your head—it will be safer. There is still Siberia for Ivan Kroll just as there may be dangers from your friends in the club yonder for Julius Greatman, who arranged so indiscreet a meeting in his private room. Good night to you.”
The caretaker did not reply, but opening the door, bowed us into the passage that led to the big room. We had not taken half a dozen steps when I looked back over my shoulder, expecting to see him behind us. But he had vanished.
“He's gone,” I whispered, gripping my companion by the arm.
“I know, I know. Keep quiet.”
As we stood there listening, I heard the sudden clatter of boots upon a stairway, and then silence.
“It appears to me that we shall have an interesting evening,” said Addington Peace.
A twist in the passage, a turn through a door, and we were rattling down the back stairs and out into a moonlit yard. In the denser darkness under the walls I made out a double row of big barrows, from which there came a subtle aroma in which stale fish predominated. From amongst them a tall shadow arose and came slipping to our side.
“He's off, sir,” said the serjeant, for it was he. “Rushed by, shaking his fist and talking to himself like a madman. Where has he gone, do you think?”
“To Amaroff's studio; and we must get there before him. The nearest cab-rank, if you please, Jackson.”
We ran through the yard, hustled up the narrow streets, lost ourselves, as far as I was concerned, in a maze of alleys, and finally shot out into a roaring thoroughfare, crowded with a strolling population. No cab was in sight. Opposite the lamps of the underground station the inspector stopped us.
“It would be quicker,” he said, with a jerk of the head, and we turned into the booking-office and galloped down the stairs. Luck was with us, and we tumbled into a carriage as the train moved away.
We were not alone, and we journeyed in silence. Station after station slipped by, until at last we were in the south-western district again. My excitement increased as we fled up the stairs of the South Kensington station. Here was a new sensation, keen, virile, natural; here was a race worth the trouble it involved. I did not understand; but I knew that on our speed much depended. Indeed, I could have shouted aloud, but for the influence of those two quiet, unemotional figures that trotted on either hand.
I regretted nothing—an hour of this was worth a year of artistic contemplation.
At the corner we found a hansom, and soon were rattling down the King's Road. When the cab stopped, to the inspector's order, it was not, as I expected, at the corner of Harden Place, but a street preceding it. Down this we walked quickly until we came upon a seedy-looking fellow with a red muffler about his neck, leaning against the wall.
I war surprised when we halted in front of him.
“Good evening, Harrison,” said the inspector. “Anything to report?”
“They're there, sir. They came about ten minutes ago. Job and Turner are watching the door in Harden Place, and I came here.”
“They didn't see any of you?”
“No, sir, I am sure of it.”
“You had better join the others in Harden Place. Keep within hearing, and if I whistle, kick in the side door of the studio—it can be done. There is a man who I fancy will have a key to the door that is due in about five minutes. If I have not whistled before he arrives, let him through. You understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
The detective faded discreetly into the darkness, while the inspector turned to me.
“There may be complications, Mr. Phillips, and no slight danger. I must ask you to go home.”
“I shall do nothing of the sort.”
“Mutiny,” he said; but I could see that he was smiling. “You are rather a fraud, Mr. Phillips—rather a fraud, you know. There is more of a fighter than a dilletante in you, after all. Come, then—over you go.”
A jump, a scramble, and all three of us were over the wall, dropping into a ragged shrubbery of laurel. We groped and stumbled our way through the growth of bushes until we emerged on a grass plot. Then I understood. We were at the back of Amaroff's studio. On the side where we stood was the out-house, its sloping roof reaching up to the long windows under the eaves—the upper lights, as sculptors call them. And even as I looked there came through these windows a flicker of light, an eye that winked in the darkness and was gone.
We crept softly forward until we reached the shadow of the out-house. It was roofed with rough tiles, which came to within seven feet of the ground. Fortunately, they did not project out from the wall of the building.
“You must help us up, Jackson,” Peace whispered, “and then go round to the door, which I see at the back there. If they make a bolt that way, blow your whistle. If I whistle, start hammering on the door as if you were a dozen men. Now then, take me on your shoulders.”
He scrambled to the roof like a cat. Lying flat, he thrust out a hand. A hoist from the sergeant, and I landed beside him. We waited a few moments, and then commenced to work our way up the roof. From its upper angle I found that the greater part of the interior of the studio was within our observation.
The moonlight that drifted through the opposing panes flooded the centre of the studio with soft light, in the midst of which the bust in bronze rose darkly upon its pedestal. A minute, and then the eye of light winked out, flickered, explored the pools of shadow, and finally steadied on the wall as three men moved from the room beneath us, following one by one. A second lantern came into play, and before our eyes commenced a search such as I could have hardly credited, so swift, methodical, and thorough were its methods. The cushions were probed with long pins, the cracks of the bare boards, and the nails that held them in position, were studied each in turn, the plastered walls were sounded inch by inch, the locks of desk and drawer were picked with the ease of mechanical knowledge.
We heard it before the men below, the faint patter, patter on the road outside of a runner in desperate haste. The footsteps grew silent, and in the pause there must have come a sound, audible to them though not to us, for the lantern slides shut down like the snapping of teeth, and the men vanished into the gloom. Only the moonlight remained, bathing the Nero in its gentle beams. I glanced at Peace. His expression was one of beatific enjoyment, but his whistle was at his lips.
I could not see the entrance door, so that the struggle was well-nigh over before I knew it was begun. The stranger fought hard, as I judged from the scuffling thuds, yet he raised no cry for help. Then the eyes of the lanterns glowed again, and they led him into the centre of the studio with the glint of steel marking the handcuffs on his wrists. It was Greatman—the fox that had run into the den of the wolves!
“And so, mon ami, you play a double game.”
It was not until he spoke that I realized that I could hear what went forward within. The big ventilators above me were open, and Nicolin—for it was he—did not modulate his voice.
“It is you that killed him,” cried the prisoner, raising his fettered hands. “You that have betrayed me. Murderer and liar that you are.”
His frail body shook to the fury that was on him; but the Russian laughed in his black beard, stroking it with his hands.
“I had almost forgotten,” he said. “It may be that you have some cause of complaint against me. But now that you are here, you will doubtless be kind enough to save us trouble. Where, my good Kroll, are the bombs hidden?”
“Do you think I shall tell you?”
“Remember, Amaroff is dead. They will not go to Paris now. Do not be foolish. Show me the hiding-place, and no harm shall come to you.”
“No.”
“Then you will return to Russia. The Odessa forgery will carry you there by English law—but, remember, it is for something more than forgery that you will have to answer when you arrive.”
There was a silence, and then Nicolin spoke again—two words.
“Sagalien Island.”
“I shall not go there,” said the prisoner, simply. “I shall not go there—Nicolin the spy, Nicolin the murderer and liar!”
“Then you will achieve a miracle. For, as the Czar rules, before a week is out you will be on the sea, and within a month—stop him, stop him!”
He had sprung from them with a bound like that of a wild beast, and with his fettered hands had gripped the shaft of the bust of Nero, swinging it high above his head. For a part of a second, as a film might seize the photograph, I saw him stand in the moonlight with that cruel face in bronze rocking above his own white face in flesh and blood below; yet, as I remember it, there was neither fear nor anger in his expression. And then, as it were, the shutter clicked, for Peace dealt me so violent a blow that it sent me rolling down the roof into the darkness. And as I tumbled headlong from the edge, the whole air seemed to burst into fragments about me—a mighty concussion that left me, deafened, shaken, bewildered, amongst the broken tiles and falling fragments on the ground below.
•••••
I was in my most comfortable chair, with old Jacob washing the cut on my head, and the inspector's nimble fingers twisting a bandage before I quite realized that I had escaped that great explosion. Vaguely, as in a dream, I remembered that two men, presumably Peace and the sergeant, had dragged me to my feet, had knotted a handkerchief round my head, had pushed me over the wall, and finally lifted me into a passing cab—all with a mad haste as if it were we who had been the criminals. Anyhow, I was at home, which was of the first importance to me at the moment.
“What blew up, inspector?” I asked faintly.
“The dynamite hidden in the bust—but don't ask questions.”
“Oh, I'm all right,” I told him. “Do explain things.”
“I'll call to-morrow, and”
“No, tell me now, or I shall not sleep a wink.”
He looked at me a moment, with his head cocked on one side after his quaint fashion.
“Very well,” he said at last. “I'll talk, if you'll promise to keep quiet.”
I promised, and he began.
“It's quite a simple story. Nicolin had got word that an attempt was to be made on the Czar, who is due in Paris the day after to-morrow, and that Amaroff was engineering the whole affair; also the Russian was making no headway, and he knew that his position was at stake if he failed. So he got desperate, and took the game into his own hands. He forced Greatman to fix a rendezvous, brought up his men, and strangled Amaroff in the sanded parlour. It was a smart thing to do, for no one was likely to suspect them, especially as he gave out that Amaroff was one of his own officers.”
“But how did you locate the place where the murder occurred?” I asked him feebly.
“It was raining last night—do you remember?”
“Yes.”
“When I first arrived at the mortuary, I went over Amaroff's clothing. On the soles of his boots was a patch of dry sand. Therefore he could not have walked through the wet streets to the spot where he was found. Also the sand must have been on the floor where he last stood. On the back of his coat was a slimy smeer mixed with the scales of mackerel. If my first proposition was correct, he must have been carried from the place with the sanded floor; and the suggestion was that a fish-barrow had been used, a fish-barrow such as you may see the London costers pushing before them in their street sales. It was not likely that the men implicated would have risked carrying him further than was necessary. That limited the radius of the search. Indeed, we located the club in under three hours.”
“Of course it seems quite easy,” I told him. “But when did you first suspect that Nicolin was lying?”
“His search of the studio was simply a blind,” he said. “I soon caught on to that. Also in Amaroff s little bedroom stood his luggage ready packed. He was just off on a journey—that was plain. Nicolin had said nothing about a journey, which was in itself suspicious. I knew the Russian was not the bungler he pretended to be, and I admit that I was puzzled. Then you came along and told me of the business with the key. It was plain they were coming back—but why? It was to discover it that I left three men to watch the studio while I kept my appointment with Jackson in Maiden Square. From what I learnt from him it was evident that Greatman was a man who knew something; so I tried a bluff on him. It's quite simple, isn't it?”
“Oh yes,” I said; “but how did you know Greatman was going to the studio when he ran away?”
“Rather an unnecessary question, Mr. Phillips, isn't it? Consider a minute. Amaroff was a Nihilist; he was playing a big game—which means dynamite with folks of their persuasion. He had been knocked out of the running, but the dynamite remained. And where? In the studio where Nicolin was returning to search for it; where Greatman also would go to recover it if he desired to revenge himself on Nicolin by carrying out his friend's plot himself. Mark you, I do not believe that originally he had any active part in carrying out this assassination. But when he heard how Nicolin had fooled him, he was anxious to get square by risking all and smuggling the bombs to Paris himself. Moreover, Mr. Phillips, I wanted to locate that dynamite. It is not well to have bombs floating about London, ready to the hand of well-bred lunatics. They breed international squabbles in which we, the police, get jumped upon.”
“And they were hidden in the bust?”
“A very good place too. With careful packing, they would have got to Paris safe enough. The Nero was a known work of art. No one would have suspected it for a moment. Of course I had no idea that the dynamite was stored in the bronze till Greatman grabbed it, and I saw his face. Then I punched you in the chest and rolled after you myself.”
“You saved my life anyway,” I said gratefully.
“Tut, tut, Mr. Phillips, that's nothing. Another day you may do the same for me.”
“If I get a chance,” I told him. “But what will be done now?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“I dragged you off to be away before the crowd arrived. There was no point in your being found in the neighbourhood and asked questions at the inquest on what remains of their bodies. I shall report to Scotland Yard, and Scotland Yard will talk to the Foreign Office, and the Foreign Office will make polite representations to St. Petersburg, and everything will be hushed up. After all, there's nobody left to punish and nobody to pity, barring Greatman, who had the makings of a man in him. Amaroff was a romantic murderer, and Nicolin a practical one; but neither of them were at all the sort of people to encourage. So I should advise you to keep quiet, Mr. Phillips, and not talk of your adventure. Do you agree?”
“Certainly,” I said; and we shook hands on it.