The Red Book Magazine/Volume 39/Number 1/The Winds of Death

by E. Phillips Oppenheim

 

The greatest series of detective-mystery stories since “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes”

 

The Winds
of Death

By E. PHILLIPS OPPENHEIM

Illustrated by W. B. King

Hunter becomes hunted in this new episode in the pursuit of an arch criminal by a master detective. Sir Norman Greyes, the detective, begins this narrative:

I KNOW nothing of psychology, or any of the mental or nervous phenomena connected with the study of this abstruse subject. What happened to me during the autumn following my visit to Paris remains in my mind unexplained and inexplicable. I shall just set it down, because it becomes a part of the story.

A strong man, in the possession of vigorous health, living an out-of-door life in a quiet country neighborhood, I suddenly became afraid. I had the strongest conviction that some terrible disaster was hanging over me. Every morning, when I took up my gun for a tramp or stepped into my car for any sort of excursion, I felt a chill presentiment of evil. It was not that I lost my nerve. I was still shooting and playing golf as well or better than ever. I drove my car and went about the daily pursuits of life with an even pulse. My fears were not analyzable, and it really seemed as though they reached me through the brain rather than the nerves. I felt evil around me, and I looked always for an enemy. I woke often in the night, and I listened for footsteps, unafraid yet expecting danger. I altered my will and sent it to the lawyer's. Several matters connected with the letting of my farms I cleared up almost hastily with my agent. I was conscious of only one enemy in the world, and it was practically impossible that he should be in England. Yet I expected death.

I was living at the time at Greyes Manor, the small but very pleasant country house which had come to me with my inheritance. My establishment was moderate, even for a bachelor. There was my housekeeper, Mrs. Foulds, who had been in the service of my uncle, an elderly lady of sixty-four who had lived at Greyes all her life, was related to half the farmers in the neighborhood, and was a pleasant, high-principled and altogether estimable person. Adams, her nephew, was my butler and personal servant. There was a boy under him, also of the district, a cook and three maidservants whom I seldom saw.

The only other member of my household was Miss Simpson, a secretary engaged for me through a well-known office in London, to whom I dictated, for several hours a day, material for the work on crime which I had made up my mind to write, directly I had relinquished my post at Scotland Yard. She was a woman of about fifty years of age, small, with gray hair parted neatly in the middle, the only sister of a clergyman in Cambridgeshire, an agreeable and unobtrusive person, whom I invited to dine downstairs once a week, but whom I otherwise never saw except when engaged upon our work, or in the distance, taking her daily bicycle ride in the park or the lanes around.

Out of doors there was Benjamin Adams, my gamekeeper, the brother of my butler; and Searle, my chauffeur, who came to me from a place in Devonshire with excellent references, a simple-minded and almost overingenuous youth. These comprised the little coterie of persons with whom I was brought into con- tact day by day. Not one of them could possibly have borne me any ill-will; yet I lived among them, waiting for death!

One morning—I remember that it was the first of November—I set out for a long tramp, accompanied only by Adams, the keeper, and a couple of dogs. We were on the boundary of my land, looking for stray pheasants in a large root-field. On my right was a precipitous gorge which extended for about half a mile, thickly planted with small fir trees. I was walking, by arrangement, about twenty yards ahead of Adams, when I was suddenly conscious of a familiar sensation. There was the zip of a bullet singing through the air, a report from somewhere in the gorge, a neat round hole through my felt hat.

“Gawd A'mighty!” yelled Adams. “What be doing?”

I showed him the hole in my hat. He stood with his mouth open, looking at it. There was no further sound from the gorge except the tumbling of the stream down at the bottom. It was an absolutely hopeless place to search.

“We'll be getting home, Adams,” I said.

“There be some rascal about, for sure!” the man gasped, gazing fearfully toward the gorge.

“As he can see us,” I pointed out, “and we certainly shall never be able to see him, I think we'll make for the road.”

Adams complained sometimes of rheumatism when I walked him too fast, but on this occasion he was a hundred yards ahead of me when we reached the lane. On our homeward way he was voluble.

“There be James Adams, my nephew,” he said, “and William Crocombe, who do farm them lands. They be harmless folk, if ever such were. Some lad, I reckon got hold of a rifle.”

“Do either of them take in tourists?” I asked

Adams was doubtful. That afternoon I motored over to make inquiries. Neither of the farmers accepted tourists; neither of them had seen a stranger about the place; and as regards rifles, the only one I could discover had obviously not been discharged for a year. I drove on to the county police station and left a message for the inspector. He came over to see me that evening, solemn, ponderous and unimpressed.

“I suspect some farmer's lad was out after rabbits, sir,” his decision

I showed him my hat.

“Farmers' lads,” I pointed out, “don't as a rule shoot rabbits with a rifle which carries a bullet that size.”

He scratched his head. The matter was certainly puzzling, but apparently without absorbing interest to him.

“Them lads be powerful mischievous!” he sighed.

I dismissed him after the usual refreshments had been proffered and accepted. A few further inquiries which I myself made in the neighborhood led to nothing.

I took my little two-seater out to call on a friend, a few afternoons afterward, and found the steering-gear fallen to pieces before I had gone a mile. I was thrown into a ditch, but escaped without serious injury. I scarcely needed Searle's assurance to convince me that he knew nothing of the matter, but even in its damaged state it was quite obvious that the pins had been willfully withdrawn from the pillar.

THE fact that I was compelled to be a prisoner in the house for several days from an injury to my knee, and worked at unaccustomed hours, was responsible for my accidental discovery of Mrs. Simpson's diary. I came into the room unexpectedly and found her writing. It never occurred to me but that she was engaged upon my work, and so I looked over her shoulder. She was writing in a diary, completing her entry for the day before:

N.G worked for two hours, practiced golf in park, lunched in, took out two-seater in afternoon. Met with accident but was able to walk home. Said little about his injuries, which were not serious. Accepted invitation shoot Woolhanger Manor next Tuesday at eleven o'clock. Probably return across moor at dusk.

Miss Simpson was suddenly conscious of my presence. She placed her hand over the page

“This is my private diary, Sir Norman,” she asserted.

“So I gathered,” I replied. “What is your interest in my doings, Miss Simpson?”

“A personal one,” she assured me. “I appeal to you as a gentleman to let me have the volume.”

I confess that I was weak. An altercation of any sort whatever, ending, without doubt, in a struggle for the possession of the diary with this quiet-looking, elderly lady, was peculiarly repugnant to me. I rang the bell.

“I shall order the car to take you to Barnstaple for the five o'clock train, Miss Simpson,” I said.

She rose to her feet, grasping the book firmly.

“What is your complaint against me, Sir Norman?” she asked.

“During this last week,” I told her, “two attempts have been made upon my life. I am naturally suspicious of people who keep a close account of my personal movements.”

She stood for a moment looking at me through her gold-rimmed spectacles in a dazed, incredulous sort way. Then she turned and left the room. I never saw her again.

It was that very same afternoon, on my return from the village, where I had gone to mail a letter with my own hands, that I found a gray limousine touring-car covered with mud, outside my front door, and Adams announced that a gentleman was waiting to see me in the study. To my surprise and infinite satisfaction, it was Rimmington.

“I have this moment posted a letter to you,” I said, as we shook hands.

“Anything doing down here?” he asked quickly.

“Too much for my liking,” I answered. “What will you have—tea or a whisky and soda?”

He accepted the tea, and ate buttered toast in large quantities.

“I have come straight through from Basingstoke,” he explained. “The Chief rather got the wind up about you.”

“Tell me all about it,” I begged.

“I wish I could,” Rimmington replied as he accepted a cigar and lit it. “You read the papers, I suppose?”

“Regularly.”

“You've seen what a hell of a time they've been having round New York? Eleven undiscovered murders in ten days, and several million dollars stolen. The New York police have been working steadily for some time, and made their coup last week. They made half a dozen arrests, but the head of the gang escaped.”

“A known person?” I asked

“Personally,” was the confident reply, “I don't think there is the slightest doubt but that he is the man who has passed at different times as Thomas Pugsley, James Stanfield and originally Michael Sayers. He has vanished from the face of the earth, so far as the New York police have ascertained, but they obtained possession of an uncompleted letter which he must have been typing at the time of the raid. The first page he probably destroyed or took with him. The second page refers to you. Here is a copy.”

Rimmington withdrew from his pocketbook a halfsheet of paper and passed it to me. I read it slowly, word for word:

Things here have come to their natural end. The last fortnight has been productive, but there is danger in any further prosecution of our energies. There is only one man who stands in the way of my return to London. You know well of whom I speak. I wait day by day for your news of him, and hope to hear of no more blunders. See that the woman you know of, too, is carefully watched. She may be as loyal as she seems, but there are moments when I have had my doubts. If N. G. can be disposed of—

“Interesting,” I remarked, “very! To whom was the letter addressed?”

“To a firm of leather-brokers in Bermondsey,” Rimmington replied, “and it was written on the notepaper of a firm of hide-brokers in New York.”

“The letter is from our friend, right enough,” I decided. “There have been two attempts upon my life within the last two days and I have just sent away a secretary who was keeping a careful note of my doings.”

We talked for an hour or more, and arrived without difficulty at a mutual understanding. Rimmington undertook to send a good man down from Scotland Yard to make inquiries in the neighborhood, and he promised also to trace my late secretary's antecedents through the office from which she had come. In the meantime he begged me to return to London with him. The suggestion was not at first altogether attractive to me.

“I don't like being driven away from my own home,” I grumbled. “Besides, there will be nothing for me to do in London at this time of the year.”

“Greyes,” he said earnestly, “listen to me: You can play golf round London, and get on with your book. You are far safer there than you would be in an unprotected neighborhood like this. But apart from that altogether, we want you up there. This wave of crime in New York had ceased. Paris, to, is quieter. The Chief is profoundly impressed with the belief that it is because operations are being transferred to London. That odd sheet of letter which I have shown you confirms the idea. I am perfectly convinced in my own mind that we are going to be up against it hard within the next few weeks.”

“When do you want me to come?” I asked.

“Back with me tonight,” he answered promptly. “There is a full moon tonight, and my chauffeur knows every inch of the road. We can leave after dinner and breakfast in London.”

“Very well,” I agreed. “I will order an early dinner, and we can start directly afterward.”

I HAD told Rimmington of all the material things which had happened to me down at Greyes Manor, but I had not spoken of that curious sense of impending evil which had clouded my days, and the prescience of which had been so remarkably verified. We were scarcely crossing the first stretch of Exmoor, however, when the memory of it came back to me, and with the memory an overpowering return of the feeling itself. I filled a pipe, stretched myself out in a corner of the car, and set myself to fight this grim ogre of fear.

Illustration: “Gawd A'mighty!” yelled Adams, “What be doing?” I showed him the hole in my hat.

It was no easy matter, however. All through the night I was haunted with fancies. The gorse-bushes on the moors seemed like crouching men, the whistle from a distant railway station a warning of impending danger. In a small village before we arrived at Taunton, a man stood in the open doorway of his house, looking out at the night. He scanned us as we passed, and turned away. Through the uncurtained window of his sitting-room I saw a telephone on his table.

At Wiveliscombe, a man with a motorcycle stood silent as we passed. He leaned forward as though to see the number of our car. In ten minutes he raced past us, his powerful engine making the night hideous with its unsilenced explosions. Across Salisbury Plain, as we drew near Stonehenge, a cruelly cold wind was blowing. We drank from a flask which I had brought, and wrapped ourselves up a little closer. At some crossroads, high up in the bleakest part, another car was waiting, its lights out, its appearance sinister. We passed it, however, at fifty miles an hour, and the man who was its sole occupant scarcely looked at us.

We passed through Amesbury, up the long rise to Andover. through Basingstoke, and settled down into a steady fifty miles an hour along wonderful roads. The moon was paling now, and there were signs of dawn; right ahead of us was a thin streak of silver in the clouds, slowly changing to a dull purple. Before we had realized it, we were in the outskirts of London, our ace gradually reduced, but still racing through the somber twilight.

At Isleworth, just as we had passed under the railway arch, I felt the brakes suddenly applied and thrust my head out of the window. We had come almost to a standstill, stopped by a stalwart policeman who, notebook in hand, had been talking to the occupant of a touring-car drawn up by the side of the road. He came up to the open window.

“Are you gentlemen going through to London?” he inquired,

“We are,” I told him. “What can we do for you?”

The words had scarcely left my lips when I knew that we were in a trap. I realized it just in time to save my life. I struck with all my force at the ugly little black revolver which was thrust almost into my face. There was a report, a sharp pain at the top of my shoulder, and the revolver itself slipped from the man's crushed fingers. I was within an ace of having him by the throat, but he just eluded me. The touring-car was now passing us slowly, and he leaped into it, leaving his helmet lying in the road. A third man, who seemed to rise up from underneath our car, tore along and jumped in behind, and they shot forward, traveling at a most astonishing pace.

Rimmington shouted to our chauffeur through the tube, with the idea of pursuing them. We started forward with a series of horrible bumps, and came almost immediately to a standstill. We sprang out. Both our back tires had been stabbed through with some sharp instrument. In the distance, the other car had rounded the corner, and with screaming siren, was racing away for London.

Janet Takes Up the Story

IT was toward the middle of October when I heard from my husband for the first time in many months. For a long time my luck had been atrocious I lost the greater part of the money paid me for the recovery of Mrs. Trumperton-Smith's diamonds, by an investment in a small millinery business which I discovered, too late, to be already moribund. I had lost post after post for the same maddening reason. My looks had suffered through privation, and my shabby clothes were unbecoming enough; but if I had been Helen of Troy herself, I could scarcely have evoked more proposals of the sort which must bring to an end ordinary relations between employer and employee. My good resolutions began to weaken. I had almost made up my mind to appeal for help in quarters which would necessarily have meant the end of my more or less honest life, when one morning a young man who looked like a bank-clerk was ushered shamelessly by my landlady into my bed-sitting-room. I was folding up a coat which I was going to take to the pawnbroker.

I was not in a very pleasant frame of mind, and I was furious with my landlady

“What do you want?” I asked coldly. “This is not a room in which I can receive visitors.”

“My visit is one of business, madam,” he answered. “Are you Mrs. Janet Stanfield?”

“I am generally known by that name,” I replied.

He opened his pocketbook and counted out two hundred pounds in bank-notes upon the table. I watched him, spellbound.

“With the compliments of the bank manager,” he said as he took up his hat and turned away.

“Who sent the notes?” I called out after him. “What bank is it from?”

“The bank of faith, hope and charity,” he answered with a smile. “Good morning!”

He was gone before I could get out so much as another word. I took up the notes greedily. I had done my best to live without my husband's help ever since certain news as to his doings in America had reached me. For some reason which I did not myself altogether understand, I had, I thought, cut myself off from any association with him and his friends. Yet in my present straits my attempt at independence seemed hopeless. The money was a necessity to me.

I paid my landlady, and made her a present of my dilapidated wardrobe. I possessed the art of knowing how and where to buy things, and before lunch-time that day I was installed in a small flat in Albemarle Street, wearing clothes which were in keeping with my surroundings with an evening dress and cloak in reserve. My neck and throat and fingers were bare, for I had seen nothing of my jewelry since our ill-omened adventure in Paris.

At five minutes to one, however, even this condition was mended. A youth from the hall-porter's office put a package into my hand which had just been left by a messenger. I opened it and found a dozen familiar morocco cases. A portion of the jewelry, which I had never thought to see again, was in my hands. It was now clear that my husband had either already returned or was on the point of doing so, and that my help was needed. Nevertheless three days went by without a sign or message from anybody, three days during which I lived after the fashion of a cat, curled up in warmth and luxury, clinging to the feel of my clothes, reveling in the perfumes of my bath, eating good food with slow but careful appreciation. I felt the life revive in me, the blood flow once more through my veins. During those three days nothing in this world would have driven me back to my poverty. I would have committed almost any crime rather than return to it.

ON the fourth day I met Norman Greves. I was leaving a hairdresser's in Curzon Street when he rounded the corner of Clarges Street, carrying a bag of golf-clubs and evidently looking for a taxicab. I was within a foot or two of him before he recognized me. I was conscious of a keen and peculiar thrill of pleasure as I saw something flash into his stern, unimpressive face. Enemies though we were, he was glad to see me.

“Good morning, Sir Norman,” I said, holding out my hand. “Are there no more criminals left in the world, that you take a holiday?”

He smiled, and put his clubs through through the open window of a taxicab which had just drawn up by the side of the curb.

“I am tired of hunting criminals,” he confessed. “Besides, they are turning the tables. They are hunting me.”

“Indeed?” I answered. “That sounds as though my husband were coming back.”

“There are rumors of it,” he admitted. “Are you staying near here?”

“I am living at the Albemarle Court,” I told him. “Why not have me watched? If he does come back, I am sure I am one of the first people he would want to visit.”

“It is a wonderful idea,” he agreed, with a peculiar gleam in his keen gray eyes. “I would rather bribe you, though, to give him up.”

“How much?” I asked. “He has treated me very badly lately.”

“Dine with me tonight,” he suggested, “and we will discuss it.”

I am convinced that Norman Greyes is my enemy, as he is Michael's, and that I hate him. Nevertheless he has a power ever me to which I shall never yield but which I cannot explain or analyze. At the thought of dining alone with him, I felt a little shiver run through my body. He stood looking down at me, smiling as he waited for my answer.

“I shall be charmed,” I assented boldly.

“At my rooms,” he suggested, “—Number Thirteen. About eight o'clock?”

“Why not at a restaurant?” I asked.

“Out of consideration for you,” he replied promptly. “You are probably more or less watched, and your movements reported to the organization of which your husband is the chief. If you are seen dining alone with me in a public place, they may imagine that you have come over to the enemy.”

“You are most thoughtful,” I replied, with all the sarcasm in my tone which I could command. “I will come to your rooms, then.”

HE nodded pleasantly. raised his cap and stepped into the taxicab. I watched him a moment, hating him because he seemed the one person who had the power to ruffle me. He was dressed just as I like to see men dressed, in gray tweed loose but well-fitting. He wore a soft collar, and the tie of a famous cricket club. His tweed cap was set just at the right angle. He moved with the light ease of an athlete. I hated his shrewd, kindly smile. the clearness of his bronzed complexion, the little humorous lines about his eyes. I went straight back to my rooms and wrote him a few impulsive lines. I wrote to say that I would dine with him at any restaurant he liked, but not in Clarges Street, and that he could call for me at eight o'clock.

At half-past three that afternoon I received the invitation which I had been expecting, and at four o'clock I stepped out of a taxicab and entered the offices of a firm of solicitors situated in a quiet square near Lincoln's Inn. An office-boy rose up from behind a worm-eaten desk and invited me to seat myself on a hard wooden chair while he disappeared in search of Mr. Younghusband, the principal partner in the firm. The office was decorated by rows of musty files, and a line of bills containing particulars of property sales, the solicitor in each case being the firm of Younghusband, Nicholson and Younghusband. After a few minutes' delay, the boy summoned me and held open a door on the other side of the passage.

“Mr. Younghusband will see you, madam,” he announced.

The door was closed behind me, and I shook hands with a tall elderly man who rose to welcome me in somewhat abstracted fashion. He was untidily but professionally dressed. He wore old-fashioned steel-rimmed spectacles, reposing at the present moment on his forehead. The shape of his collar and the fashion of his tie belonged to a bygone generation. There were rows of tin boxes extending to the ceiling, a library of law-books, and his table was littered with papers. He reseated himself as soon as I had accepted his proffered chair, pushed a thick parchment deed on one side, crossed his legs and looked at me steadily.

“Mrs.—er—Morrison?” he began, using the name by which I had been known during the last few months.

“That is more or less my name,” I admitted. “I received a telephone message asking me to call this afternoon.”

“Quite so, quite so,” he murmured a little vaguely. “Now let me see,” he went on, looking among some papers. “Your husband appears to have been a client of the firm for many years but my memory—oh, here we are,” he broke off, drawing a slip of paper toward him. “My instructions, cabled from New York were to hand you the sum of two hundred pounds. You received that amount, I believe?”

“I received it and have spent the greater part of it,” I replied. His expression became a little less benign.

“Dear me!” he exclaimed. “That sounds rather extravagant.”

Illustration: “Capital!” he replied. “You see no resemblance to Mr. James Stanfield?”

“I have been without any means of support for many months,” I told him.

He scratched his upper lip thoughtfully.

“Your husband has, I gather, been engaged in operations in New York of a delicate nature. The world of finance has always its secrecies. He appears now, however, to have brought his operations to a close. You are aware, perhaps, that he has landed in England?”

My heart gave a little jump. I could not tell whether the sensation I experienced had more in it of joy or of fear.

“Is he safe?” I asked.

“Safe?” Mr. Younghusband repeated a little vaguely. “Why not?”

There was a moment's silence. I looked around at the shabby but imposing contents of the office, at the lawyer's mildly puzzled expression. I drank in the whole atmosphere of the place, and I was dumb. Mr. Younghusband suddenly smiled, and tapped with his forefinger upon the table. He was like a man who has suddenly seen through a faulty phrase in some legal document.

“I apprehend you,” he said. “For a moment I was not altogether able to appreciate the significance of your question. New York is a curious place, and I understand—er—that the financial operations in which your husband has been concerned, although profitable, may have made him enemies. He traveled back to England, indeed, under an assumed name. Let me see—I have it somewhere,” he went on, fumbling once more among a mass of papers. “I had it in my hand only a few minutes ago..... Here we are—Mr. Richard Peters. I am instructed to say, madam, that your husband would welcome a call from you.”

“You have his address?”

For the moment Mr. Younghusband looked vague again. Then, with a little smile of triumph, he turned over the slip of paper which he held in his hand.

“Yes—his address,” he repeated. “Precisely! I have it here—Number Eleven, Jackson Street.”

“Mayfair?” I inquired.

“Mayfair,” he assented. “The address reminds me, madam,” he went on, “that you must be prepared to see your husband—er—not in the best of health. He is, in fact, in a nursing home.”

“Is he seriously ill?” I asked.

“I believe not,” was the deliberate reply. “You will have an opportunity of judging for yourself within half an hour. I am to ask you to visit him as soon as you can find it convenient.”

I sat quite still. I was trying to get these matters into my mind. The lawyer glanced at his watch and immediately struck the bell in front of him.

“You will forgive me, madam,” he said, rising to his feet. “I have a meeting of the Law Society to attend. My compliments to your husband. Tell him to let me know if I can be of further service him.”

THE boy was holding open the door.

The lawyer, with a courteous old-fashioned bow, evidently considered the interview at an end. I went back to my taxicab, a little bewildered, and drove at once to Jackson Street. A nurse in starched linen frock and flowing cap consulted a little slate and led me to a bedroom in one of the upper stories.

“Mr. Peters is getting on famously, madam,” she announced encouragingly. “The doctor hopes to be able to let him out at the end of the week. Please step in. You can stay as long as you like..... Your wife is here, Mr. Peters,” she went on, ushering me through the doorway.

She closed the door, and I advanced toward the bedside, only to step back with a little exclamation. I thought that there must be some mistake. The man who sat up in bed, watching me, seemed at first sight a stranger. His hair, which had been dark, was now of a sandy gray, and he wore a short, stubbly mustache of the same color. His cheeks had fallen in; his forehead seemed more prominent; there was an unfamiliar scar on the left side of his face.

“Michael!” I exclaimed incredulously.

“Capital!” he replied. “You see no resemblance to Mr. James Stanfield?”

“Not the slightest,” I assured him. “The whole thing is wonderful. But what is the matter with you?”

“Nothing,” was the impatient rejoinder. “I have had to starve myself to get thin. I took the place and the name of a business acquaintance upon the boat. It was quite a smart piece of work. I am supposed to be suffering from a nervous breakdown. Bosh! I haven't a nerve in my body.'

“You left me alone for a long time,” I reminded him.

“I was fighting for my life,” he answered grimly. “You don't know the inner workings of the game, so I can't explain. I was hemmed in. As soon as I broke away, they were never on to me. I brought off the coup of my life in New York, but—things went wrong, Janet. You know what that means.”

I watched his face while I listened to him speak. The man was reëstablishing his strange ascendency over me, but for the first time I felt the thrill of fear as he spoke.

“You killed some one?” I whispered

“I had no intention of doing anything of the sort,” he answered. “It was Hartley, the banker, himself. He forced me into a fight at close quarters. We exchanged shots. I was wounded. So was he. He was in miserable health, though, and he never recovered. The shock killed him as much as anything. I got away all right, but it means all or nothing for the future.”

“If you have enough,” I suggested, “why not try the other end of the world?”

His thin lips curled scornfully.

“I have thought of everywhere,” he answered, “of Indo-China, the South Sea Islands, New Guinea, the far South American states. They are all hopeless. The eyes follow. There is safety only under the shadow of the arm.”

“What about our meeting?” I asked. “I am known.”

“It is a problem to be solved,” he said slowly. “There is risk in it; yet the thought of parting with you, Janet, is like a clutching hand laid upon my heart.”

It was the first word of the sort he had ever spoken to me, and again for some reason I shivered.

“What is your need of me now?” I demanded.

“To get rid of Norman Greyes,” he replied.

There was a silence during which I felt that he was studying my face, and although I do not believe that a muscle twitched or that my eyes lost their steady light, still, I was thankful for the darkened room. We heard the subdued noises of the house, the distant hum of vehicles, every now and then the sharp honk of a motor-horn. In the tops of the trees just outside, some birds were twittering.

“I have figured it all out,” he went on. “I am safe here, safe except from that one man. Even as I am now, he would recognize me. The moment I move, and there are big things to be done here, I shall feel him on my trail. It is his life or mine.”

“Why do you think that I can do this?” I asked.

His lips curled once more in the faintest of mirthless smiles.

“Because, although he does not know it, Norman Greyes feels your attraction. He is too strong a man to succumb, but he can never resist dallying with it, because it provides him with something new in life. You suggest to him a sensation which he obtains nowhere else. I know men like a book, Janet, and I have seen these things.”

“Do you know women too?” I ventured.

“Sufficiently,” he answered.

“How do you propose that I should do this?” I asked.

He raised himself a little in the bed.

“Norman Greyes,” he said, “is one of those men whom it is hard to kill. A fool walks to his death. Norman Greyes wears the aura of defiance. They have tried during the last few weeks. One of the finest marksmen in England missed him with a rifle at a hundred yards. He is a reckless motorist; yet he drove a car with safety when the steering-wheel collapsed. Nevertheless, if he had stayed in Devonshire, we should have had him. They tell me that he is in London.”

“He is within a few yards of this spot,” I announced, “and I am dining with him tonight.”

For a moment his eyes flashed at me like steel caught in the sunlight.

“I met him at the corner of the street this morning,” I explained.

“I ask no questions,” was the cold reply. “I shall know if you are ever faithless..... A little present for you, Janet.”

He brought his hand from under the pillow and handed me an exquisitely chased gold box, a curio of strange shape and with small enamel figures inlaid. I exclaimed with delight. He touched the spring. It was filled with white powder, on the top of which reposed a tiny powder-puff.

“Be careful not to let any of the powder get near your mouth,” he enjoined. “A pinch upon the food or in the glass is sufficient. Take it.”

I dropped it into the silk bag I was carrying. I was trying to tell myself that I had killed a man before.

“That half-ounce cost me one hundred pounds,” he said. “Men scour the world for it. You can handle the powder freely. There is no danger until it gets into the system.”

“And then?”

“It makes a helpless invalid of the strongest for at least two years.”

Norman Greyes Continues:

I HAVE come to the conclusion that in future I shall do well to avoid Janet Stanfield. As the cold, mechanical assistant of a master of crime, she interested me. I have even devoted a chapter of my forthcoming book to an analysis of her character. I am beginning to realize however, that even the hardest and cruelest woman cannot escape from the tendencies of her sex. In all the duels I have previously had with her, she has carried herself with cold and decorous assurance. There has never been a moment when I have seen the light of any real feeling in her eyes. Last night, however, a different woman dined with me. She was more beautiful than I had ever imagined her, by reason of a flush that came and went in her cheeks. Her eyes seemed to have increased in size and to flash with a softer brilliance. We sat at a corner table against the wall at Soto's, where the room was, as usual, filled with beautiful women. There was no one who attracted so much attention as my companion. There was no one who deserved it.

“You think I am looking well?” she asked, in reply to some observation of mine.

“Wonderfully,” I replied. “Also, if I may be allowed to comment upon it, changed. You look as though you had found some new interest in life.”

She laughed a little bitterly.

“Where should I seek it?” she asked.

“Perhaps the change is internal,” I suggested. “Perhaps your outlook upon life is changing. Perhaps you have made up your mind to put away the false gods.”

“I have traveled too far along one road,” she answered hardly.

It was at this stage in our conversation that I made up my mind that it were better for me to see this woman no more. Our eyes met, and she suddenly was not hard at all. I seemed to look into her soul, and there were things there which I could not understand. I was thankful that the dancing began just then. It helped us over a curious gulf of silence. Janet danced with little knowledge of the steps, but with a wonderful sense of rhythm. I was ashamed of the pleasure it gave me to realize, as we moved away to the music, that this woman of steel had a very soft and human body.

Janet was certainly in a strange and nervous state that evening. We danced for some time without resting. Then she suddenly turned back to the table. I had paused for a moment to speak to some acquaintances. When I rejoined her, she was pale, and the hand which was holding her little gold powder-box was shaking.

“Has anything happened?” I asked her, a little concerned. “Are you not feeling well? Perhaps the dancing—”

“I loved it,” she interrupted. “I am quite well.”

Yet she sat there, tense and speechless. I made up my mind to finish my coffee and go. I had raised the cup to my lips, even, when she suddenly swayed across the table, knocking my arm with her elbow. My coffee was spilled, and the tablecloth was ruined. Janet began to laugh. For a moment she seemed to have a fit of breathlessness. Then, as she watched the cloth being changed, she became herself again, She had the air of one who had met a crisis and conquered it.

“I am so sorry for my clumsiness,” she said penitently. “Let us dance again while they rearrange the table.”

This time her feet moved less airily to the music. She seemed heavier in my arms.

“Who gave you that beautiful gold powder-box?” I inquired, more for the sake of making conversation than from any actual curiosity.

Something of the old light flashed for a moment in her eyes. Her reply struck me as curious.

“Satan,” she acknowledged. “I have made up my mind, however, to send it back.”