FIRE-TONGUE

By Sax Rohmer

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I.   A CLIENT FOR
PAUL HARLEY

CHAPTER II.   THE
SIXTH SENSE

CHAPTER III.   SHADOWS


CHAPTER IV.   INTRODUCING
MR. NICOL BRINN

CHAPTER V.   THE
GATES OF HELL

CHAPTER VI.   PHIL
ABINGDON ARRIVES

CHAPTER VII.   CONFESSIONS


CHAPTER VIII.   A
WREATH OF HYACINTHS

CHAPTER IX.   TWO
REPORTS

CHAPTER X.   HIS
EXCELLENCY ORMUZ KHAN

CHAPTER XI.
  THE PURPLE STAIN


CHAPTER XII.   THE VEIL IS RAISED

CHAPTER XIII.   NICOL BRINN HAS A
VISITOR

CHAPTER XIV.   WESSEX
GETS BUSY

CHAPTER XV.   NAIDA


CHAPTER XVI.   NICOL
BRINN GOES OUT

CHAPTER XVII.   WHAT
HAPPENED TO HARLEY

CHAPTER XVIII.
  WHAT HAPPENED TO HARLEY—CONTINUED

CHAPTER XIX.   WHAT HAPPENED TO
HARLEY—CONCLUDED

CHAPTER XX.
  CONFLICTING CLUBS


CHAPTER XXI.   THE SEVENTH KAMA

CHAPTER XXII.   FIRE-TONGUE SPEAKS


CHAPTER XXIII.   PHIL
ABINGDON’S VISITOR

CHAPTER XXIV.
  THE SCREEN OF GOLD


CHAPTER XXV.   AN ENGLISHMAN’S HONOUR

CHAPTER XXVI.   THE ORCHID OF SLEEP


CHAPTER XXVII.   AT
HILLSIDE

CHAPTER XXVIII.   THE
CHASE

CHAPTER XXIX.   THE
CATASTROPHE

CHAPTER XXX.   NICOL
BRINN’S STORY OF THE CITY OF FIRE


CHAPTER XXXI.   STORY OF THE CITY OF FIRE (CONTINUED)


CHAPTER XXXII.   STORY
OF THE CITY OF FIRE (CONTINUED)


CHAPTER XXXIII.     STORY OF THE CITY OF FIRE
(CONTINUED)

CHAPTER XXXIV.   NICOL
BRINN’S STORY (CONCLUDED)

CHAPTER I. A CLIENT FOR PAUL HARLEY

Some of Paul Harley’s most interesting cases were brought to his notice in
an almost accidental way. Although he closed his office in Chancery Lane
sharply at the hour of six, the hour of six by no means marked the end of
his business day. His work was practically ceaseless. But even in times of
leisure, at the club or theatre, fate would sometimes cast in his path the
first slender thread which was ultimately to lead him into some
unsuspected labyrinth, perhaps in the underworld of London, perhaps in a
city of the Far East.

His investigation of the case of the man with the shaven skull afforded an
instance of this, and even more notable was his first meeting with Major
Jack Ragstaff of the Cavalry Club, a meeting which took place after the
office had been closed, but which led to the unmasking of perhaps the most
cunning murderer in the annals of crime.

One summer’s evening when the little clock upon his table was rapidly
approaching the much-desired hour, Harley lay back in his chair and stared
meditatively across his private office in the direction of a large and
very handsome Burmese cabinet, which seemed strangely out of place amid
the filing drawers, bookshelves, and other usual impedimenta of a
professional man. A peculiarly uninteresting week was drawing to a close,
and he was wondering if this betokened a decreased activity in the higher
criminal circles, or whether it was merely one of those usual quiescent
periods which characterize every form of warfare.

Paul Harley, although the fact was unknown to the general public, occupied
something of the position of an unofficial field marshal of the forces
arrayed against evildoers. Throughout the war he had undertaken
confidential work of the highest importance, especially in regard to the
Near East, with which he was intimately acquainted. A member of the
English bar, and the last court of appeal to which Home Office and Foreign
Office alike came in troubled times, the brass plate upon the door of his
unassuming premises in Chancery Lane conveyed little or nothing to the
uninitiated.

The man himself, with his tropical bronze and air of eager vitality, must
have told the most careless observer that he stood in the presence of an
extraordinary personality. He was slightly gray at the temples in these
days, but young in mind and body, physically fit, and possessed of an
intellectual keenness which had forced recognition from two hemispheres.
His office was part of an old city residence, and his chambers adjoined
his workroom, so that now, noting that his table clock registered the hour
of six, he pressed a bell which summoned Innes, his confidential
secretary.

“Well, Innes,” said Harley, looking around, “another uneventful day.”

“Very uneventful, Mr. Harley. About a month of this and you will have to
resume practice at the bar.”

Paul Harley laughed.

“Not a bit likely, Innes,” he replied. “No more briefs for me. I shall
retire to Norfolk and devote my declining years to fishing.”

“I don’t know that fishing would entirely satisfy me,” said Innes.

“It would more than satisfy me,” returned Harley. “But every man to his
own ambition. Well, there is no occasion to wait; you might as well get
along. But what’s that you’ve got in your hand?”

“Well,” replied Innes, laying a card upon the table, “I was just coming in
with it when you rang.”

Paul Harley glanced at the card.

“Sir Charles Abingdon,” he read aloud, staring reflectively at his
secretary. “That is the osteologist?”

“Yes,” answered Innes, “but I fancy he has retired from practice.”

“Ah,” murmured Harley, “I wonder what he wants. I suppose I had better see
him, as I fancy that he and I met casually some years ago in India. Ask
him to come in, will you?”

Innes retiring, there presently entered a distinguished-looking, elderly
gentleman upon whose florid face rested an expression not unlike that of
embarrassment.

“Mr. Harley,” he began, “I feel somewhat ill at ease in encroaching upon
your time, for I am by no means sure that my case comes within your
particular province.”

“Sit down, Sir Charles,” said Harley with quiet geniality. “Officially, my
working day is ended; but if nothing comes of your visit beyond a chat it
will have been very welcome. Calcutta, was it not, where we last met?”

“It was,” replied Sir Charles, placing his hat and cane upon the table and
sitting down rather wearily in a big leather armchair which Harley had
pushed forward. “If I presume upon so slight an acquaintance, I am sorry,
but I must confess that only the fact of having met you socially
encouraged me to make this visit.”

He raised his eyes to Harley’s face and gazed at him with that peculiarly
searching look which belongs to members of his profession; but mingled
with it was an expression of almost pathetic appeal, of appeal for
understanding, for sympathy of some kind.

“Go on, Sir Charles,” said Harley. He pushed forward a box of cigars.
“Will you smoke?”

“Thanks, no,” was the answer.

Sir Charles evidently was oppressed by some secret trouble, thus Harley
mused silently, as, taking out a tin of tobacco from a cabinet beside him,
he began in leisurely manner to load a briar. In this he desired to convey
that he treated the visit as that of a friend, and also, since business
was over, that Sir Charles might without scruple speak at length and at
leisure of whatever matters had brought him there.

“Very well, then,” began the surgeon; “I am painfully conscious that the
facts which I am in a position to lay before you are very scanty and
unsatisfactory.”

Paul Harley nodded encouragingly.

“If this were not so,” he explained, “you would have no occasion to apply
to me, Sir Charles. It is my business to look for facts. Naturally, I do
not expect my clients to supply them.”

Sir Charles slowly nodded his head, and seemed in some measure to recover
confidence.

“Briefly, then,” he said, “I believe my life is in danger.”

“You mean that there is someone who desires your death?”

“I do.”

“H’m,” said Harley, replacing the tin in the cupboard and striking a
match. “Even if the facts are scanty, no doubt you have fairly substantial
grounds for such a suspicion?”

“I cannot say that they are substantial, Mr. Harley. They are rather more
circumstantial. Frankly, I have forced myself to come here, and now that I
have intruded upon your privacy, I realize my difficulties more keenly
than ever.”

The expression of embarrassment upon the speaker’s face had grown intense;
and now he paused, bending forward in his chair. He seemed in his glance
to appeal for patience on the part of his hearer, and Harley, lighting his
pipe, nodded in understanding fashion. He was the last man in the world to
jump to conclusions. He had learned by bitter experience that lightly to
dismiss such cases as this of Sir Charles as coming within the province of
delusion, was sometimes tantamount to refusing aid to a man in deadly
peril.

“You are naturally anxious for the particulars,” Sir Charles presently
resumed. “They bear, I regret to say, a close resemblance to the symptoms
of a well-known form of hallucination. In short, with one exception, they
may practically all be classed under the head of surveillance.”

“Surveillance,” said Paul Harley. “You mean that you are more or less
constantly followed?”

“I do.”

“And what is your impression of this follower?”

“A very hazy one. To-night, as I came to your office, I have every reason
to believe that someone followed me in a taxicab.”

“You came in a car?”

“I did.”

“And a cab followed you the whole way?”

“Practically the whole way, except that as my chauffeur turned into
Chancery Lane, the cab stopped at the corner of Fleet Street.”

“Your idea is that your pursuer followed on foot from this point?”

“Such was my impression.”

“H’m, quite impossible. And is this sort of thing constant, Sir Charles?”

“It has been for some time past.”

“Anything else?”

“One very notable thing, Mr. Harley. I was actually assaulted less than a
week ago within sight of my own house.”

“Indeed! Tell me of this.” Paul Harley became aware of an awakening
curiosity. Sir Charles Abingdon was not the type of man who is lightly
intimidated.

“I had been to visit a friend in the neighbourhood,” Sir Charles
continued, “whom I am at present attending professionally, although I am
actually retired. I was returning across the square, close to midnight,
when, fortunately for myself, I detected the sound of light, pattering
footsteps immediately behind me. The place was quite deserted at that
hour, and although I was so near home, the worst would have happened, I
fear, if my sense of hearing had been less acute. I turned in the very
instant that a man was about to spring upon me from behind. He was holding
in his hand what looked like a large silk handkerchief. This encounter
took place in the shadow of some trees, and beyond the fact that my
assailant was a small man, I could form no impression of his identity.”

“What did you do?”

“I turned and struck out with my stick.”

“And then?”

“Then he made no attempt to contest the issue, but simply ran swiftly off,
always keeping in the shadows of the trees.”

“Very strange,” murmured Harley. “Do you think he had meant to drug you?”

“Maybe,” replied Sir Charles. “The handkerchief was perhaps saturated with
some drug, or he may even have designed to attempt to strangle me.”

“And you formed absolutely no impression of the man?”

“None whatever, Mr. Harley. When you see the spot at which the encounter
took place, if you care to do so, you will recognize the difficulties. It
is perfectly dark there after nightfall.”

“H’m,” mused Harley. “A very alarming occurrence, Sir Charles. It must
have shaken you very badly. But we must not overlook the possibility that
this may have been an ordinary footpad.”

“His methods were scarcely those of a footpad,” murmured Sir Charles.

“I quite agree,” said Harley. “They were rather Oriental, if I may say
so.”

Sir Charles Abingdon started. “Oriental!” he whispered. “Yes, you are
right.”

“Does this suggest a train of thought?” prompted Harley.

Sir Charles Abingdon cleared his throat nervously. “It does, Mr. Harley,”
he admitted, “but a very confusing train of thought. It leads me to a
point which I must mention, but which concerns a very well-known man.
Before I proceed I should like to make it clear that I do not believe for
a moment that he is responsible for this unpleasant business.”

Harley stared at him curiously. “Nevertheless,” he said, “there must be
some data in your possession which suggest to your mind that he has some
connection with it.”

“There are, Mr. Harley, and I should be deeply indebted if you could visit
my house this evening, when I could place this evidence, if evidence it
may be called, before you. I find myself in so delicate a position. If you
are free I should welcome your company at dinner.”

Paul Harley seemed to be reflecting.

“Of course, Sir Charles,” he said, presently, “your statement is very
interesting and curious, and I shall naturally make a point of going fully
into the matter. But before proceeding further there are two questions I
should like to ask you. The first is this: What is the name of the
‘well-known’ man to whom you refer? And the second: If not he then whom do
you suspect of being behind all this?”

“The one matter is so hopelessly involved in the other,” he finally
replied, “that although I came here prepared as I thought with a full
statement of the case, I should welcome a further opportunity of
rearranging the facts before imparting them to you. One thing, however, I
have omitted to mention. It is, perhaps, of paramount importance. There
was a robbery at my house less than a week ago.”

“What! A robbery! Tell me: what was stolen?”

“Nothing of the slightest value, Mr. Harley, to any one but myself—or
so I should have supposed.” The speaker coughed nervously. “The thief had
gained admittance to my private study, where there are several cases of
Oriental jewellery and a number of pieces of valuable gold and silverware,
all antique. At what hour he came, how he gained admittance, and how he
retired, I cannot imagine. All the doors were locked as usual in the
morning and nothing was disturbed.”

“I don’t understand, then.”

“I chanced to have occasion to open my bureau which I invariably keep
locked. Immediately—immediately—I perceived that my papers
were disarranged. Close examination revealed the fact that a short
manuscript in my own hand, which had been placed in one of the
pigeonholes, was missing.”

“A manuscript,” murmured Harley. “Upon a technical subject?”

“Scarcely a technical subject, Mr. Harley. It was a brief account which I
had vaguely contemplated publishing in one of the reviews, a brief account
of a very extraordinary patient whom I once attended.”

“And had you written it recently?”

“No; some years ago. But I had recently added to it. I may say that it was
my purpose still further to add to it, and with this object I had actually
unlocked the bureau.”

“New facts respecting this patient had come into your possession?”

“They had.”

“Before the date of the attack upon you?”

“Before that date, yes.”

“And before surveillance of your movements began?”

“I believe so.”

“May I suggest that your patient and the ‘well-known man’ to whom you
referred are one and the same?”

“It is not so, Mr. Harley,” returned Sir Charles in a tired voice.
“Nothing so simple. I realize more than ever that I must arrange my facts
in some sort of historical order. Therefore I ask you again: will you dine
with me to-night?”

“With pleasure,” replied Harley, promptly. “I have no other engagement.”

That his ready acceptance had immensely relieved the troubled mind of Sir
Charles was evident enough. His visitor stood up. “I am not prone to
sickly fancies, Mr. Harley,” he said. “But a conviction has been growing
upon me for some time that I have incurred, how I cannot imagine, but that
nevertheless I have incurred powerful enmity. I trust our evening’s
counsel may enable you, with your highly specialized faculties, to detect
an explanation.”

And it was instructive to note how fluently he spoke now that he found
himself temporarily relieved of the necessity of confessing the source of
his mysterious fears.

CHAPTER II. THE SIXTH SENSE

Paul Harley stepped into his car in Chancery Lane. “Drive in the direction
of Hyde Park Corner,” he directed the chauffeur. “Go along the Strand.”

Glancing neither right nor left, he entered the car, and presently they
were proceeding slowly with the stream of traffic in the Strand. “Pull up
at the Savoy,” he said suddenly through the tube.

The car slowed down in that little bay which contains the entrance to the
hotel, and Harley stared fixedly out of the rear window, observing the
occupants of all other cars and cabs which were following. For three
minutes or more he remained there watching. “Go on,” he directed.

Again they proceeded westward and, half-way along Piccadilly, “Stop at the
Ritz,” came the order.

The car pulled up before the colonnade and Harley, stepping out, dismissed
the man and entered the hotel, walked through to the side entrance, and
directed a porter to get him a taxicab. In this he proceeded to the house
of Sir Charles Abingdon. He had been seeking to learn whether he was
followed, but in none of the faces he had scrutinized had he detected any
interest in himself, so that his idea that whoever was watching Sir
Charles in all probability would have transferred attention to himself
remained no more than an idea. For all he had gained by his tactics, Sir
Charles’s theory might be no more than a delusion after all.

The house of Sir Charles Abingdon was one of those small, discreet
establishments, the very neatness of whose appointments inspires respect
for the occupant. If anything had occurred during the journey to suggest
to Harley that Sir Charles was indeed under observation by a hidden enemy,
the suave British security and prosperity of his residence must have
destroyed the impression.

As the cab was driven away around the corner, Harley paused for a moment,
glancing about him to right and left and up at the neatly curtained
windows. In the interval which had elapsed since Sir Charles’s departure
from his office, he had had leisure to survey the outstanding features of
the story, and, discounting in his absence the pathetic sincerity of the
narrator, he had formed the opinion that there was nothing in the account
which was not susceptible of an ordinary prosaic explanation.

Sir Charles’s hesitancy in regard to two of the questions asked had
contained a hint that they might involve intimate personal matters, and
Harley was prepared to learn that the source of the distinguished
surgeon’s dread lay in some unrevealed episode of the past. Beyond the
fact that Sir Charles was a widower, he knew little or nothing of his
private life; and he was far too experienced an investigator to formulate
theories until all the facts were in his possession. Therefore it was with
keen interest that he looked forward to the interview.

Familiarity with crime, in its many complexions, East and West, had
developed in Paul Harley a sort of sixth sense. It was an evasive, fickle
thing, but was nevertheless the attribute which had made him an
investigator of genius. Often enough it failed him entirely. It had failed
him to-night—or else no one had followed him from Chancery Lane.

It had failed him earlier in the evening when, secretly, he had watched
from the office window Sir Charles’s car proceeding toward the Strand.
That odd, sudden chill, as of an abrupt lowering of the temperature, which
often advised him of the nearness of malignant activity, had not been
experienced.

Now, standing before Sir Charles’s house, he “sensed” the atmosphere
keenly—seeking for the note of danger.

There had been a thunder shower just before he had set out, and now,
although rain had ceased, the sky remained blackly overcast and a curious,
dull stillness was come. The air had a welcome freshness and the
glistening pavements looked delightfully cool after the parching heat of
the day. In the quiet square, no doubt, it was always restful in contrast
with the more busy highroads, and in the murmur of distant traffic he
found something very soothing. About him then were peace, prosperity, and
security.

Yet, as he stood there, waiting—it came to him: the note of danger.
Swiftly he looked to right and left, trying to penetrate the premature
dusk. The whole complexion of the matter changed. Some menace intangible
now, but which at any moment might become evident—lay near him. It
was sheer intuition, no doubt, but it convinced him.

A moment later he had rung the bell; and as a man opened the door, showing
a easy and well-lighted lobby within, the fear aura no longer touched Paul
Harley. Out from the doorway came hominess and that air of security and
peace which had seemed to characterize the house when viewed from outside.
The focus of menace, therefore, lay not inside the house of Sir Charles
but without. It was very curious. In the next instant came a possible
explanation.

“Mr. Paul Harley?” said the butler tentatively.

“Yes, I am he.”

“Sir Charles is expecting you, sir. He apologizes for not being in to
receive you, but he will only be absent a few minutes.”

“Sir Charles has been called out?” inquired Harley as he handed hat and
coat to the man.

“Yes, sir. He is attending Mr. Chester Wilson on the other side of the
square, and Mr. Wilson’s man rang up a few moments ago requesting Sir
Charles to step across.”

“I see,” murmured Harley, as the butler showed him into a small but
well-filled library on the left of the lobby.

Refreshments were set invitingly upon a table beside a deep lounge chair.
But Harley declined the man’s request to refresh himself while waiting and
began aimlessly to wander about the room, apparently studying the titles
of the works crowding the bookshelves. As a matter of fact, he was
endeavouring to arrange certain ideas in order, and if he had been
questioned on the subject it is improbable that he could have mentioned
the title of one book in the library.

His mental equipment was of a character too rarely met with in the
profession to which he belonged. While up to the very moment of reaching
Sir Charles’s house he had doubted the reality of the menace which hung
over this man, the note of danger which he had sensed at the very
threshold had convinced him, where more ordinary circumstantial evidence
might have left him in doubt.

It was perhaps pure imagination, but experience had taught him that it was
closely allied to clairvoyance.

Now upon his musing there suddenly intruded sounds of a muffled
altercation. That is to say, the speakers, who were evidently in the lobby
beyond the library door, spoke in low tones, perhaps in deference to the
presence of a visitor. Harley was only mildly interested, but the voices
had broken his train of thought, and when presently the door opened to
admit a very neat but rather grim-looking old lady he started, then looked
across at her with a smile.

Some of the grimness faded from the wrinkled old face, and the
housekeeper, for this her appearance proclaimed her to be, bowed in a
queer Victorian fashion which suggested that a curtsy might follow. One
did not follow, however. “I am sure I apologize, sir,” she said. “Benson
did not tell me you had arrived.”

“That’s quite all right,” said Harley, genially.

His smile held a hint of amusement, for in the comprehensive glance which
the old lady cast across the library, a glance keen to detect disorder and
from which no speck of dust could hope to conceal itself, there remained a
trace of that grimness which he had detected at the moment of her
entrance. In short, she was still bristling from a recent encounter. So
much so that detecting something sympathetic in Harley’s smile she availed
herself of the presence of a badly arranged vase of flowers to linger and
to air her grievances.

“Servants in these times,” she informed him, her fingers busily
rearranging the blooms, “are not what servants were in my young days.”

“Unfortunately, that is so,” Harley agreed.

The old lady tossed her head. “I do my best,” she continued, “but that
girl would not have stayed in the house for one week if I had had my way.
Miss Phil is altogether too soft-hearted. Thank goodness, she goes
to-morrow, though.”

“You don’t refer to Miss Phil?” said Harley, intentionally
misunderstanding.

“Gracious goodness, no!” exclaimed the housekeeper, and laughed with
simple glee at the joke. “I mean Jones, the new parlourmaid. When I say
new, they are all new, for none of them stay longer than three months.”

“Indeed,” smiled Harley, who perceived that the old lady was something of
a martinet.

“Indeed, they don’t. Think they are ladies nowadays. Four hours off has
that girl had to-day, although she was out on Wednesday. Then she has the
impudence to allow someone to ring her up here at the house; and finally I
discover her upsetting the table after Benson had laid it and after I had
rearranged it.”

She glanced indignantly in the direction of the lobby. “Perhaps one day,”
she concluded, pathetically, as she walked slowly from the room, “we shall
find a parlourmaid who is a parlourmaid. Good evening, sir.”

“Good evening,” said Harley, quietly amused to be made the recipient of
these domestic confidences.

He continued to smile for some time after the door had been closed. His
former train of ideas was utterly destroyed, but for this he was not
ungrateful to the housekeeper, since the outstanding disadvantage of that
strange gift resembling prescience was that it sometimes blunted the
purely analytical part of his mind when this should have been at its
keenest. He was now prepared to listen to what Sir Charles had to say and
to judge impartially of its evidential value.

Wandering from side to side of the library, he presently found himself
standing still before the mantelpiece and studying a photograph in a
silver frame which occupied the centre of the shelf. It was the photograph
of an unusually pretty girl; that is to say, of a girl whose beauty was
undeniable, but who belonged to a type widely removed from that of the
ordinary good-looking Englishwoman.

The outline of her face was soft and charming, and there was a questioning
look in her eyes which was alluring and challenging. Her naive expression
was palpably a pose, and her slightly parted lips promised laughter. She
possessed delightfully wavy hair and her neck and one shoulder, which were
bare, had a Grecian purity. Harley discovered himself to be smiling at the
naive lady of the photograph.

“Presumably ‘Miss Phil’,” he said aloud.

He removed his gaze with reluctance from the fascinating picture, and
dropping into the big lounge chair, he lighted a cigarette. He had just
placed the match in an ash tray when he heard Sir Charles’s voice in the
lobby, and a moment later Sir Charles himself came hurrying into the
library. His expression was so peculiar that Harley started up
immediately, perceiving that something unusual had happened.

“My dear Mr. Harley,” began Sir Charles, “in the first place pray accept
my apologies—”

“None are necessary,” Harley interrupted. “Your excellent housekeeper has
entertained me vastly.”

“Good, good,” muttered Sir Charles. “I am obliged to Mrs. Howett,” and it
was plainly to be seen that his thoughts were elsewhere. “But I have to
relate a most inexplicable occurrence—inexplicable unless by some
divine accident the plan has been prevented from maturing.”

“What do you mean, Sir Charles?”

“I was called ten minutes ago by someone purporting to be the servant of
Mr. Chester Wilson, that friend and neighbour whom I have been attending.”

“So your butler informed me.”

“My dear sir,” cried Sir Charles, and the expression in his eyes grew
almost wild, “no one in Wilson’s house knew anything about the matter!”

“What! It was a ruse?”

“Palpably a ruse to get me away from home.”

Harley dropped his cigarette into the ash tray beside the match, where,
smouldering, it sent up a gray spiral into the air of the library. Whether
because of his words or because of the presence of the man himself, the
warning, intuitive finger had again touched Paul Harley. “You saw or heard
nothing on your way across the square to suggest that any one having
designs on your safety was watching you?”

“Nothing. I searched the shadows most particularly on my return journey,
of course. For the thing cannot have been purposeless.”

“I quite agree with you,” said Paul Harley, quietly.

Between the promptings of that uncanny sixth sense of his and the working
of the trained deductive reasoning powers, he was momentarily at a loss.
Some fact, some episode, a memory, was clamouring for recognition, while
the intuitive, subconscious voice whispered: “This man is in danger;
protect him.” What was the meaning of it all? He felt that a clue lay
somewhere outside the reach of his intelligence, and a sort of anger
possessed him because of his impotence to grasp it.

Sir Charles was staring at him in that curiously pathetic way which he had
observed at their earlier interview in Chancery Lane. “In any event,” said
his host, “let us dine: for already I have kept you waiting.”

Harley merely bowed, and walking out of the library, entered the cosy
dining room. A dreadful premonition had claimed him as his glance had met
that of Sir Charles—a premonition that this man’s days were
numbered. It was uncanny, unnerving; and whereas, at first, the atmosphere
of Sir Charles Abingdon’s home had been laden with prosperous security,
now from every side, and even penetrating to the warmly lighted dining
room, came that chilling note of danger.

In crossing the lobby he had not failed to note that there were many
Indian curios in the place which could not well have failed to attract the
attention of a burglar. But that the person who had penetrated to the
house was no common burglar he was now assured and he required no further
evidence upon this point.

As he took his seat at the dining table he observed that Sir Charles’s
collection had overflowed even into this room. In the warm shadows about
him were pictures and ornaments, all of which came from, or had been
inspired by, the Far East.

In this Oriental environment lay an inspiration. The terror which had come
into Sir Charles’s life, the invisible menace which, swordlike, hung over
him, surely belonged in its eerie quality to the land of temple bells, of
silent, subtle peoples, to the secret land which has bred so many
mysteries. Yes, he must look into the past, into the Indian life of Sir
Charles Abingdon, for the birth of this thing which now had grown into a
shadow almost tangible.

Benson attended at table, assisted by a dark-faced and very surly-looking
maid, in whom Harley thought he recognized the housekeeper’s bete noire.

When presently both servants had temporarily retired. “You see, Mr.
Harley,” began Sir Charles, glancing about his own room in a manner almost
furtive, “I realized to-day at your office that the history of this dread
which has come upon me perhaps went back so far that it was almost
impossible to acquaint you with it under the circumstances.”

“I quite understand.”

“I think perhaps I should inform you in the first place that I have a
daughter. Her mother has been dead for many years, and perhaps I have not
given her the attention which a motherless girl is entitled to expect from
her father. I don’t mean,” he said, hastily, “that we are in any sense out
of sympathy, but latterly in some way I must confess that we have got a
little out of touch.” He glanced anxiously at his guest, indeed almost
apologetically. “You will of course understand, Mr. Harley, that this
seeming preamble may prove to have a direct bearing upon what I propose to
tell you?”

“Pray tell the story in your own way, Sir Charles,” said Harley with
sympathy. “I am all attention, and I shall only interrupt you in the event
of any point not being quite clear.”

“Thank you,” said Sir Charles. “I find it so much easier to explain the
matter now. To continue, there is a certain distinguished Oriental
gentleman—”

He paused as Benson appeared to remove the soup plates.

“It is always delightful to chat with one who knows India so well as you
do,” he continued, glancing significantly at his guest.

Paul Harley, who fully appreciated the purpose of this abrupt change in
the conversation, nodded in agreement. “The call of the East,” he replied,
“is a very real thing. Only one who has heard it can understand and
appreciate all it means.”

The butler, an excellently trained servant, went about his work with quiet
efficiency, and once Harley heard him mutter rapid instructions to the
surly parlourmaid, who hovered disdainfully in the background. When again
host and guest found themselves alone: “I don’t in any way distrust the
servants,” explained Sir Charles, “but one cannot hope to prevent gossip.”
He raised his serviette to his lips and almost immediately resumed: “I was
about to tell you, Mr. Harley, about my daughter’s—”

He paused and cleared his throat, then, hastily pouring out a glass of
water, he drank a sip or two and Paul Harley noticed that his hand was
shaking nervously. He thought of the photograph in the library, and now,
in this reference to a distinguished Oriental gentleman, he suddenly
perceived the possible drift of the conversation.

This was the point to which Sir Charles evidently experienced such
difficulty in coming. It was something which concerned his daughter; and,
mentally visualizing the pure oval face and taunting eyes of the library
photograph, Harley found it impossible to believe that the evil which
threatened Sir Charles could possibly be associated in any way with
Phyllis Abingdon.

Yet, if the revelation which he had to make must be held responsible for
his present condition, then truly it was a dreadful one. No longer able to
conceal his concern, Harley stood up. “If the story distresses you so
keenly, Sir Charles,” he said, “I beg—”

Sir Charles waved his hand reassuringly. “A mere nothing. It will pass,”
he whispered.

“But I fear,” continued Harley, “that—”

He ceased abruptly, and ran to his host’s assistance, for the latter,
evidently enough, was in the throes of some sudden illness or seizure. His
fresh-coloured face was growing positively livid, and he plucked at the
edge of the table with twitching fingers. As Harley reached his side he
made a sudden effort to stand up, throwing out his arm to grasp the
other’s shoulder.

“Benson!” cried Harley, loudly. “Quick! Your master is ill!”

There came a sound of swift footsteps and the door was thrown open.

“Too late,” whispered Sir Charles in a choking voice. He began to clutch
his throat as Benson hurried into the room.

“My God!” whispered Harley. “He is dying!”

Indeed, the truth was all too apparent. Sir Charles Abingdon was almost
past speech. He was glaring across the table as though he saw some ghastly
apparition there. And now with appalling suddenness he became as a dead
weight in Harley’s supporting grasp. Raspingly, as if forced in agony from
his lips:

“Fire-Tongue,” he said... “Nicol Brinn...”

Benson, white and terror-stricken, bent over him.

“Sir Charles!” he kept muttering. “Sir Charles! What is the matter, sir?”

A stifled shriek sounded from the doorway, and in tottered Mrs. Howett,
the old housekeeper, with other servants peering over her shoulder into
that warmly lighted dining room where Sir Charles Abingdon lay huddled in
his own chair—dead.

CHAPTER III. SHADOWS

“Had you reason to suspect any cardiac trouble, Doctor McMurdoch?” asked
Harley.

Doctor McMurdoch, a local practitioner who had been a friend of Sir
Charles Abingdon, shook his head slowly. He was a tall, preternaturally
thin Scotsman, clean-shaven, with shaggy dark brows and a most gloomy
expression in his deep-set eyes. While the presence of his sepulchral
figure seemed appropriate enough in that stricken house, Harley could not
help thinking that it must have been far from reassuring in a sick room.

“I had never actually detected anything of the kind,” replied the
physician, and his deep voice was gloomily in keeping with his
personality. “I had observed a certain breathlessness at times, however.
No doubt it is one of those cases of unsuspected endocarditis. Acute. I
take it,” raising his shaggy brows interrogatively, “that nothing had
occurred to excite Sir Charles?”

“On the contrary,” replied Harley, “he was highly distressed about some
family trouble, the nature of which he was about to confide to me when
this sudden illness seized him.”

He stared hard at Doctor McMurdoch, wondering how much he might hope to
learn from him respecting the affairs of Sir Charles. It seemed almost
impertinent at that hour to seek to pry into the dead man’s private life.

To the quiet, book-lined apartment stole now and again little significant
sounds which told of the tragedy in the household. Sometimes when a
distant door was opened, it would be the sobs of a weeping woman, for the
poor old housekeeper had been quite prostrated by the blow. Or ghostly
movements would become audible from the room immediately over the library—the
room to which the dead man had been carried; muffled footsteps, vague
stirrings of furniture; each sound laden with its own peculiar portent,
awakening the imagination which all too readily filled in the details of
the scene above. Then, to spur Harley to action, came the thought that Sir
Charles Abingdon had appealed to him for aid. Did his need terminate with
his unexpected death or would the shadow under which he had died extend
now? Harley found himself staring across the library at the photograph of
Phil Abingdon. It was of her that Sir Charles had been speaking when that
mysterious seizure had tied his tongue. That strange, fatal illness, mused
Harley, all the more strange in the case of a man supposedly in robust
health—it almost seemed like the working of a malignant will. For
the revelation, whatever its nature, had almost but not quite been made in
Harley’s office that evening. Something, some embarrassment or mental
disability, had stopped Sir Charles from completing his statement. Tonight
death had stopped him.

“Was he consulting you professionally, Mr. Harley?” asked the physician.

“He was,” replied Harley, continuing to stare fascinatedly at the
photograph on the mantelpiece. “I am informed,” said he, abruptly, “that
Miss Abingdon is out of town?”

Doctor McMurdoch nodded in his slow, gloomy fashion. “She is staying in
Devonshire with poor Abingdon’s sister,” he answered. “I am wondering how
we are going to break the news to her.”

Perceiving that Doctor McMurdoch had clearly been intimate with the late
Sir Charles, Harley determined to make use of this opportunity to
endeavour to fathom the mystery of the late surgeon’s fears. “You will not
misunderstand me, Doctor McMurdoch,” he said, “if I venture to ask you one
or two rather personal questions respecting Miss Abingdon?”

Doctor McMurdoch lowered his shaggy brows and looked gloomily at the
speaker. “Mr. Harley,” he replied, “I know you by repute for a man of
integrity. But before I answer your questions will you answer one of
mine?”

“Certainly.”

“Then my question is this: Does not your interest cease with the death of
your client?”

“Doctor McMurdoch,” said Harley, sternly, “you no doubt believe yourself
to be acting as a friend of this bereaved family. You regard me, perhaps,
as a Paul Pry prompted by idle curiosity. On the contrary, I find myself
in a delicate and embarrassing situation. From Sir Charles’s conversation
I had gathered that he entertained certain fears on behalf of his
daughter.”

“Indeed,” said Doctor McMurdoch.

“If these fears were well grounded, the danger is not removed, but merely
increased by the death of Miss Abingdon’s natural protector. I regret,
sir, that I approached you for information, since you have misjudged my
motive. But far from my interest having ceased, it has now as I see the
matter become a sacred duty to learn what it was that Sir Charles
apprehended. This duty, Doctor McMurdoch, I propose to fulfil with or
without your assistance.”

“Oh,” said Doctor McMurdoch, gloomily, “I’m afraid I’ve offended you. But
I meant well, Mr. Harley.” A faint trace of human emotion showed itself in
his deep voice. “Charley Abingdon and I were students together in
Edinburgh,” he explained. “I was mayhap a little strange.”

His apology was so evidently sincere that Harley relented at once. “Please
say no more, Doctor McMurdoch,” he responded. “I fully appreciate your
feelings in the matter. At such a time a stranger can only be an intruder;
but”—he fixed his keen eyes upon the physician—“there is more
underlying all this than you suspect or could readily believe. You will
live to know that I have spoken the truth.”

“I know it now,” declared the Scotsman, solemnly. “Abingdon was always
eccentric, but he didn’t know the meaning of fear.”

“Once that may have been true,” replied Harley. “But a great fear was upon
him when he came to me, Doctor McMurdoch, and if it is humanly possible I
am going to discover its cause.”

“Go ahead,” said Doctor McMurdoch and, turning to the side table, he
poured out two liberal portions of whiskey. “If there’s anything I can do
to help, count me at your service. You tell me he had fears about little
Phil?”

“He had,” answered Harley, “and it is maddening to think that he died
before he could acquaint me with their nature. But I have hopes that you
can help me in this. For instance”—again he fixed his gaze upon the
gloomy face of the physician—“who is the distinguished Oriental
gentleman with whom Sir Charles had recently become acquainted?”

Doctor McMurdoch’s expression remained utterly blank, and he slowly shook
his head. “I haven’t an idea in the world,” he declared. “A patient,
perhaps?”

“Possibly,” said Harley, conscious of some disappointment; “yet from the
way he spoke of him I scarcely think that he was a patient. Surely Sir
Charles, having resided so long in India, numbered several Orientals among
his acquaintances if not among his friends?”

“None ever came to his home,” replied Doctor McMurdoch. “He had all the
Anglo-Indian’s prejudice against men of colour.” He rested his massive
chin in his hand and stared down reflectively at the carpet.

“Then you have no suggestion to offer in regard to this person?”

“None. Did he tell you nothing further about him?”

“Unfortunately, nothing. In the next place, Doctor McMurdoch, are you
aware of any difference of opinion which had arisen latterly between Sir
Charles and his daughter?”

“Difference of opinion!” replied Doctor McMurdoch, raising his brows
ironically. “There would always be difference of opinion between little
Phil and any man who cared for her. But out-and-out quarrel—no!”

Again Harley found himself at a deadlock, and it was with scanty hope of
success that he put his third question to the gloomy Scot. “Was Sir
Charles a friend of Mr. Nicol Brinn?” he asked.

“Nicol Brinn?” echoed the physician. He looked perplexed. “You mean the
American millionaire? I believe they were acquainted. Abingdon knew most
of the extraordinary people in London; and if half one hears is true Nicol
Brinn is as mad as a hatter. But they were not in any sense friends as far
as I know.” He was watching Harley curiously. “Why do you ask that
question?”

“I will tell you in a moment,” said Harley, rapidly, “but I have one more
question to put to you first. Does the term Fire-Tongue convey anything to
your mind?”

Doctor McMurdoch’s eyebrows shot upward most amazingly. “I won’t insult
you by supposing that you have chosen such a time for joking,” he said,
dourly. “But if your third question surprised me, I must say that your
fourth sounds simply daft.”

“It must,” agreed Harley, and his manner was almost fierce; “but when I
tell you why I ask these two questions—and I only do so on the
understand ing that my words are to be treated in the strictest confidence—you
may regard the matter in a new light. ‘Nicol Brinn’ and ‘Fire-Tongue’ were
the last words which Sir Charles Abingdon uttered.”

“What!” cried Doctor McMurdoch, displaying a sudden surprising energy.
“What?”

“I solemnly assure you,” declared Harley, “that such is the case. Benson,
the butler, also overheard them.”

Doctor McMurdoch relapsed once more into gloom, gazing at the whiskey in
the glass which he held in his hand and slowly shaking his head. “Poor old
Charley Abingdon,” he murmured. “It’s plain to me, Mr. Harley, that his
mind was wandering. May not we find here an explanation, too, of this idea
of his that some danger overhung Phil? You didn’t chance to notice, I
suppose, whether he had a temperature?”

“I did not,” replied Harley, smiling slightly. But the smile quickly left
his face, which became again grim and stern.

A short silence ensued, during which Doctor McMurdoch sat staring moodily
down at the carpet and Harley slowly paced up and down the room; then:

“In view of the fact,” he said, suddenly, “that Sir Charles clearly
apprehended an attempt upon his life, are you satisfied professionally
that death was due to natural causes?”

“Perfectly satisfied,” replied the physician, looking up with a start:
“perfectly satisfied. It was unexpected, of course, but such cases are by
no means unusual. He was formerly a keen athlete, remember. ‘Tis often so.
Surely you don’t suspect foul play? I understood you to mean that his
apprehensions were on behalf of Phil.”

Paul Harley stood still, staring meditatively in the other’s direction.
“There is not a scrap of evidence to support such a theory,” he admitted,
“but if you knew of the existence of any poisonous agent which would
produce effects simulating these familiar symptoms, I should be tempted to
take certain steps.”

“If you are talking about poisons,” said the physician, a rather startled
look appearing upon his face, “there are several I might mention; but the
idea seems preposterous to me. Why should any one want to harm Charley
Abingdon? When could poison have been administered and by whom?”

“When, indeed?” murmured Harley. “Yet I am not satisfied.”

“You’re not hinting at—suicide?”

“Emphatically no.”

“What had he eaten?”

“Nothing but soup, except that he drank a portion of a glass of water. I
am wondering if he took anything at Mr. Wilson’s house.” He stared hard at
Doctor McMurdoch. “It may surprise you to learn that I have already taken
steps to have the remains of the soup from Sir Charles’s plate examined,
as well as the water in the glass. I now propose to call upon Mr. Wilson
in order that I may complete this line of enquiry.”

“I sympathize with your suspicions, Mr. Harley,” said the physician
dourly, “but you are wasting your time.” A touch of the old acidity crept
back into his manner. “My certificate will be ‘syncope due to unusual
excitement’; and I shall stand by it.”

“You are quite entitled to your own opinion,” Harley conceded, “which if I
were in your place would be my own. But what do you make of the fact that
Sir Charles received a bogus telephone message some ten minutes before my
arrival, as a result of which he visited Mr. Wilson’s house?”

“But he’s attending Wilson,” protested the physician.

“Nevertheless, no one there had telephoned. It was a ruse. I don’t assume
for a moment that this ruse was purposeless.”

Doctor McMurdoch was now staring hard at the speaker.

“You may also know,” Harley continued, “that there was an attempted
burglary here less than a week ago.”

“I know that,” admitted the other, “but it counts for little. There have
been several burglaries in the neighbourhood of late.”

Harley perceived that Doctor McMurdoch was one of those characters, not
uncommon north of the Tweed, who, if slow in forming an opinion, once
having done so cling to it as tightly as any barnacle.

“You may be right and I may be wrong,” Harley admitted, “but while your
professional business with Sir Charles unfortunately is ended, mine is
only beginning. May I count upon you to advise me of Miss Abingdon’s
return? I particularly wish to see her, and I should prefer to meet her in
the capacity of a friend rather than in that of a professional
investigator.”

“At the earliest moment that I can decently arrange a meeting,” replied
Doctor McMurdoch, “I will communicate with you, Mr. Harley. I am just
cudgelling my brains at the moment to think how the news is to be broken
to her. Poor little Phil! He was all she had.”

“I wish I could help you,” declared Harley with sincerity, “but in the
circumstances any suggestion of mine would be mere impertinence.” He held
out his hand to the doctor.

“Good-night,” said the latter, gripping it heartily. “If there is any
mystery surrounding poor Abingdon’s death, I believe you are the man to
clear it up. But, frankly, it was his heart. I believe he had a touch of
the sun once in India. Who knows? His idea that some danger threatened him
or threatened Phil may have been merely—” He tapped his brow
significantly.

“But in the whole of your knowledge of Sir Charles,” cried Harley,
exhibiting a certain irritation, “have you ever known him to suffer from
delusions of that kind or any other?”

“Never,” replied the physician, firmly; “but once a man has had the sun
one cannot tell.”

“Ah!” said Harley. “Good-night, Doctor McMurdoch.”

When presently he left the house, carrying a brown leather bag which he
had borrowed from the butler, he knew that rightly or wrongly his own
opinion remained unchanged in spite of the stubborn opposition of the
Scottish physician. The bogus message remained to be explained, and the
assault in the square, as did the purpose of the burglar to whom gold and
silver plate made no appeal. More important even than these points were
the dead man’s extraordinary words: “Fire-Tongue”—“Nicol Brinn.”
Finally and conclusively, he had detected the note of danger outside and
inside the house; and now as he began to cross the square it touched him
again intimately.

He looked up at the darkened sky. A black cloud was moving slowly
overhead, high above the roof of the late Sir Charles Abingdon; and as he
watched its stealthy approach it seemed to Paul Harley to be the symbol of
that dread in which latterly Sir Charles’s life had lain, beneath which he
had died, and which now was stretching out, mysterious and menacing, over
himself.

CHAPTER IV. INTRODUCING MR. NICOL BRINN

At about nine o’clock on the same evening, a man stood at a large window
which overlooked Piccadilly and the Green Park. The room to which the
window belonged was justly considered one of the notable sights of London
and doubtless would have received suitable mention in the “Blue Guide” had
the room been accessible to the general public. It was, on the contrary,
accessible only to the personal friends of Mr. Nicol Brinn. As Mr. Nicol
Brinn had a rarely critical taste in friendship, none but a fortunate few
had seen the long room with its two large windows overlooking Piccadilly.

The man at the window was interested in a car which, approaching from the
direction of the Circus, had slowed down immediately opposite and now was
being turned, the chauffeur’s apparent intention being to pull up at the
door below. He had seen the face of the occupant and had recognized it
even from that elevation. He was interested; and since only unusual things
aroused any semblance of interest in the man who now stood at the window,
one might have surmised that there was something unusual about the present
visitor, or in his having decided to call at those chambers; and that such
was indeed his purpose an upward glance which he cast in the direction of
the balcony sufficiently proved.

The watcher, who had been standing in a dark recess formed by the presence
of heavy velvet curtains draped before the window, now opened the curtains
and stepped into the lighted room. He was a tall, lean man having
straight, jet-black hair, a sallow complexion, and the features of a
Sioux. A long black cigar protruded aggressively from the left corner of
his mouth. His hands were locked behind him and his large and quite
expressionless blue eyes stared straight across the room at the closed
door with a dreamy and vacant regard. His dinner jacket fitted him so
tightly that it might have been expected at any moment to split at the
seams. As if to precipitate the catastrophe, he wore it buttoned.

There came a rap at the door.

“In!” said the tall man.

The door opened silently and a manservant appeared. He was spotlessly neat
and wore his light hair cropped close to the skull. His fresh-coloured
face was quite as expressionless as that of his master; his glance
possessed no meaning. Crossing to the window, he extended a small salver
upon which lay a visiting card.

“In!” repeated the tall man, looking down at the card.

His servant silently retired, and following a short interval rapped again
upon the door, opened it, and standing just inside the room announced:
“Mr. Paul Harley.”

The door being quietly closed behind him, Paul Harley stood staring across
the room at Nicol Brinn. At this moment the contrast between the types was
one to have fascinated a psychologist. About Paul Harley, eagerly alert,
there was something essentially British. Nicol Brinn, without being
typical, was nevertheless distinctly a product of the United States. Yet,
despite the stoic mask worn by Mr. Brinn, whose lack-lustre eyes were so
unlike the bright gray eyes of his visitor, there existed, if not a
physical, a certain spiritual affinity between the two; both were men of
action.

Harley, after that one comprehensive glance, the photographic glance of a
trained observer, stepped forward impulsively, hand outstretched. “Mr.
Brinn,” he said, “we have never met before, and it was good of you to wait
in for me. I hope my telephone message has not interfered with your plans
for the evening?”

Nicol Brinn, without change of pose, no line of the impassive face
altering, shot out a large, muscular hand, seized that of Paul Harley in a
tremendous grip, and almost instantly put his hand behind his back again.
“Had no plans,” he replied, in a high, monotonous voice; “I was bored
stiff. Take the armchair.”

Paul Harley sat down, but in the restless manner of one who has urgent
business in hand and who is impatient of delay. Mr. Brinn stooped to a
coffee table which stood upon the rug before the large open fireplace. “I
am going to offer you a cocktail,” he said.

“I shall accept your offer,” returned Harley, smiling. “The ‘N. B.
cocktail’ has a reputation which extends throughout the clubs of the
world.”

Nicol Brinn, exhibiting the swift adroitness of that human dodo, the New
York bartender, mixed the drinks. Paul Harley watched him, meanwhile
drumming his fingers restlessly upon the chair arm.

“Here’s success,” he said, “to my mission.”

It was an odd toast, but Mr. Brinn merely nodded and drank in silence.
Paul Harley set his glass down and glanced about the singular apartment of
which he had often heard and which no man could ever tire of examining.

In this room the poles met, and the most remote civilizations of the world
rubbed shoulders with modernity. Here, encased, were a family of
snow-white ermine from Alaska and a pair of black Manchurian leopards. A
flying lemur from the Pelews contemplated swooping upon the head of a huge
tigress which glared with glassy eyes across the place at the snarling
muzzle of a polar bear. Mycenaean vases and gold death masks stood upon
the same shelf as Venetian goblets, and the mummy of an Egyptian priestess
of the thirteenth dynasty occupied a sarcophagus upon the top of which
rested a basrelief found in one of the shrines of the Syrian fish goddess
Derceto, at Ascalon.

Arrowheads of the Stone Age and medieval rapiers were ranged alongside
some of the latest examples of the gunsmith’s art. There were elephants’
tusks and Mexican skulls; a stone jar of water from the well of Zem-Zem,
and an ivory crucifix which had belonged to Torquemada. A mat of human
hair from Borneo overlay a historical and unique rug woven in Ispahan and
entirely composed of fragments of Holy Carpets from the Kaaba at Mecca.

“I take it,” said Mr. Brinn, suddenly, “that you are up against a stiff
proposition.”

Paul Harley, accepting a cigarette from an ebony box (once the property of
Henry VIII) which the speaker had pushed across the coffee table in his
direction, stared up curiously into the sallow, aquiline face. “You are
right. But how did you know?”

“You look that way. Also—you were followed. Somebody knows you’ve
come here.”

Harley leaned forward, resting one hand upon the table. “I know I was
followed,” he said, sternly. “I was followed because I have entered upon
the biggest case of my career.” He paused and smiled in a very grim
fashion. “A suspicion begins to dawn upon my mind that if I fail it will
also be my last case. You understand me?”

“I understand absolutely,” replied Nicol Brinn. “These are dull days. It’s
meat and drink to me to smell big danger.”

Paul Harley lighted a cigarette and watched the speaker closely the while.
His expression, as he did so, was an odd one. Two courses were open to
him, and he was mentally debating their respective advantages.

“I have come to you to-night, Mr. Brinn,” he said finally, “to ask you a
certain question. Unless the theory upon which I am working is entirely
wrong, then, supposing that you are in a position to answer my question I
am logically compelled to suppose, also, that you stand in peril of your
life.”

“Good,” said Mr. Brinn. “I was getting sluggish.” In three long strides he
crossed the room and locked the door. “I don’t doubt Hoskins’s honesty,”
he explained, reading the inquiry in Harley’s eyes, “but an A1
intelligence doesn’t fold dress pants at thirty-nine.”

Only one very intimate with the taciturn speaker could have perceived any
evidence of interest in that imperturbable character. But Nicol Brinn took
his cheroot between his fingers, quickly placed a cone of ash in a little
silver tray (the work of Benvenuto Cellini), and replaced the cheroot not
in the left but in the right corner of his mouth. He was excited.

“You are out after one of the big heads of the crook world,” he said. “He
knows it and he’s trailing you. My luck’s turned. How can I help?”

Harley stood up, facing Mr. Brinn. “He knows it, as you say,” he replied,
“and I hold my life in my hands. But from your answer to the question
which I have come here to-night to ask you, I shall conclude whether or
not your danger at the moment is greater than mine.”

“Good,” said Nicol Brinn.

In that unique room, at once library and museum, amid relics of a hundred
ages, spoil of the chase, the excavator, and the scholar, these two faced
each other; and despite the peaceful quiet of the apartment up to which as
a soothing murmur stole the homely sounds of Piccadilly, each saw in the
other’s eyes recognition of a deadly peril. It was a queer, memorable
moment.

“My question is simple but strange,” said Paul Harley. “It is this: What
do you know of ‘Fire-Tongue’?”

CHAPTER V. THE GATES OF HELL

If Paul Harley had counted upon the word “Fire-Tongue” to have a dramatic
effect upon Nicol Brinn, he was not disappointed. It was a word which must
have conveyed little or nothing to the multitude and which might have been
pronounced without perceptible effect at any public meeting in the land.
But Mr. Brinn, impassive though his expression remained, could not conceal
the emotion which he experienced at the sound of it. His gaunt face seemed
to grow more angular and his eyes to become even less lustrous.

“Fire-Tongue!” he said, tensely, following a short silence. “For God’s
sake, when did you hear that word?”

“I heard it,” replied Harley, slowly, “to-night.” He fixed his gaze
intently upon the sallow face of the American. “It was spoken by Sir
Charles Abingdon.”

Closely as he watched Nicol Brinn while pronouncing this name he could not
detect the slightest change of expression in the stoic features.

“Sir Charles Abingdon,” echoed Brinn; “and in what way is it connected
with your case?”

“In this way,” answered Harley. “It was spoken by Sir Charles a few
moments before he died.”

Nicol Brinn’s drooping lids flickered rapidly. “Before he died! Then Sir
Charles Abingdon is dead! When did he die?”

“He died to-night and the last words that he uttered were ‘Fire-Tongue’—”
He paused, never for a moment removing that fixed gaze from the other’s
face.

“Go on,” prompted Mr. Brinn.

“And ‘Nicol Brinn.’”

Nicol Brinn stood still as a carven man. Indeed, only by an added rigidity
in his pose did he reward Paul Harley’s intense scrutiny. A silence
charged with drama was finally broken by the American. “Mr. Harley,” he
said, “you told me that you were up against the big proposition of your
career. You are right.”

With that he sat down in an armchair and, resting his chin in his hand,
gazed fixedly into the empty grate. His pose was that of a man who is
suddenly called upon to review the course of his life and upon whose
decision respecting the future that life may depend. Paul Harley watched
him in silence.

“Give me the whole story,” said Mr. Brinn, “right from the beginning.” He
looked up. “Do you know what you have done to-night, Mr. Harley?”

Paul Harley shook his head. Swiftly, like the touch of an icy finger, that
warning note of danger had reached him again.

“I’ll tell you,” continued Brinn. “You have opened the gates of hell!”

Not another word did he speak while Paul Harley, pacing slowly up and down
before the hearth, gave him a plain account of the case, omitting all
reference to his personal suspicions and to the measures which he had
taken to confirm them.

He laid his cards upon the table deliberately. Whether Sir Charles
Abingdon had uttered the name of Nicol Brinn as that of one whose aid
should be sought or as a warning, he had yet to learn. And by this
apparent frankness he hoped to achieve his object. That the celebrated
American was in any way concerned in the menace which had overhung Sir
Charles he was not prepared to believe. But he awaited with curiosity that
explanation which Nicol Brinn must feel called upon to offer.

“You think he was murdered?” said Brinn in his high, toneless voice.

“I have formed no definite opinion. What is your own?”

“I may not look it,” replied Brinn, “but at this present moment I am the
most hopelessly puzzled and badly frightened man in London.”

“Frightened?” asked Harley, curiously.

“I said frightened, I also said puzzled; and I am far too puzzled to be
able to express any opinion respecting the death of Sir Charles Abingdon.
When I tell you all I know of him you will wonder as much as I do, Mr.
Harley, why my name should have been the last to pass his lips.”

He half turned in the big chair to face his visitor, who now was standing
before the fireplace staring down at him.

“One day last month,” he resumed, “I got out of my car in a big hurry at
the top of the Haymarket. A fool on a motorcycle passed between the car
and the sidewalk just as I stepped down, and I knew nothing further until
I woke up in a drug store close by, feeling very dazed and with my coat in
tatters and my left arm numbed from the elbow. A man was standing watching
me, and presently when I had pulled round he gave me his card.

“He was Sir Charles Abingdon, who had been passing at the time of the
accident. That was how I met him, and as there was nothing seriously wrong
with me I saw him no more professionally. But he dined with me a week
later and I had lunch at his club about a fortnight ago.”

He looked up at Harley. “On my solemn word of honour,” he said, “that’s
all I know about Sir Charles Abingdon.”

Paul Harley returned the other’s fixed stare. “I don’t doubt your
assurance on the point, Mr. Brinn,” he acknowledged. “I can well
understand that you must be badly puzzled; but I would remind you of your
statement that you were also frightened. Why?”

Nicol Brinn glanced rapidly about his own luxurious room in an oddly
apprehensive manner. “I said that,” he declared, “and I meant it.”

“Then I can only suppose,” resumed Harley, deliberately, “that the cause
of your fear lies in the term, ‘Fire-Tongue’?”

Brinn again rested his chin in his hand, staring fixedly into the grate.

“And possibly,” went on the remorseless voice, “you can explain the
significance of that term?”

Nicol Brinn remained silent—but with one foot he was slowly tapping
the edge of the fender.

“Mr. Harley,” he began, abruptly, “you have been perfectly frank with me
and in return I wish to be as frank with you as I can be. I am face to
face with a thing that has haunted me for seven years, and every step I
take from now onward has to be considered carefully, for any step might be
my last. And that’s not the worst of the matter. I will risk one of those
steps here and now. You ask me to explain the significance of Fire-Tongue”
(there was a perceptible pause before he pronounced the word, which Harley
duly noticed). “I am going to tell you that Sir Charles Abingdon, when I
lunched with him at his club, asked me precisely the same thing.”

“What! He asked you that so long as two weeks ago?”

“He did.”

“And what reason did he give for his inquiry?”

Nicol Brinn began to tap the fender again with his foot. “Let me think,”
he replied. “I recognize that you must regard my reticence as peculiar,
Mr. Harley, but if ever a man had reason to look before he leaped, I am
that man.”

Silence fell again, and Paul Harley, staring down at Nicol Brinn, realized
that this indeed was the most hopelessly mystifying case which fate had
ever thrown in his way. This millionaire scholar and traveller, whose
figure was as familiar in remote cities of the world as it was familiar in
New York, in Paris, and in London, could not conceivably be associated
with any criminal organization. Yet his hesitancy was indeed difficult to
explain, and because it seemed to Harley that the cloud which had stolen
out across the house of Sir Charles Abingdon now hung threateningly over
those very chambers, he merely waited and wondered.

“He referred to an experience which had befallen him in India,” came Nicol
Brinn’s belated reply.

“In India? May I ask you to recount that experience?”

“Mr. Harley,” replied Brinn, suddenly standing up, “I can’t.”

“You can’t?”

“I have said so. But I’d give a lot more than you might believe to know
that Abingdon had told you the story which he told me.”

“You are not helping, Mr. Brinn,” said Harley, sternly. “I believe and I
think that you share my belief that Sir Charles Abingdon did not die from
natural causes. You are repressing valuable evidence. Allow me to remind
you that if anything should come to light necessitating a post-mortem
examination of the body, you will be forced to divulge in a court of
justice the facts which you refuse to divulge to me.”

“I know it,” said Brinn, shortly.

He shot out one long arm and grasped Harley’s shoulder as in a vice. “I’m
counted a wealthy man,” he continued, “but I’d give every cent I possess
to see ‘paid’ put to the bill of a certain person. Listen. You don’t think
I was in any way concerned in the death of Sir Charles Abingdon? It isn’t
thinkable. But you do think I’m in possession of facts which would help
you find out who is. You’re right.”

“Good God!” cried Harley. “Yet you remain silent!”

“Not so loud—not so loud!” implored Brinn, repeating that odd,
almost furtive glance around. “Mr. Harley—you know me. You’ve heard
of me and now you’ve met me. You know my place in the world. Do you
believe me when I say that from this moment onward I don’t trust my own
servants? Nor my own friends?” He removed his grip from Harley’s shoulder.
“Inanimate things look like enemies. That mummy over yonder may have
ears!”

“I’m afraid I don’t altogether understand you.”

“See here!”

Nicol Brinn crossed to a bureau, unlocked it, and while Harley watched him
curiously, sought among a number of press cuttings. Presently he found the
cutting for which he was looking. “This was said,” he explained, handing
the slip to Harley, “at the Players’ Club in New York, after a big dinner
in pre-dry days. It was said in confidence. But some disguised reporter
had got in and it came out in print next morning. Read it.”

Paul Harley accepted the cutting and read the following:

     NICOL BRINN’S SECRET AMBITIONS
 MILLIONAIRE SPORTSMAN WHO WANTS TO SHOOT
              NIAGARA!

Mr. Nicol Brinn of Cincinnati, who is at present in New York, opened his
heart to members of the Players’ Club last night. Our prominent citizen,
responding to a toast, “the distinguished visitor,” said:

“I’d like to live through months of midnight frozen in among the polar
ice; I’d like to cross Africa from east to west and get lost in the
middle. I’d like to have a Montana sheriff’s posse on my heels for horse
stealing, and I’ve prayed to be wrecked on a desert island like Robinson
Crusoe to see if I am man enough to live it out. I want to stand my trial
for murder and defend my own case, and I want to be found by the eunuchs
in the harem of the Shah. I want to dive for pearls and scale the
Matterhorn. I want to know where the tunnel leads to—the tunnel down
under the Great Pyramid of Gizeh—and I’d love to shoot Niagara Falls
in a barrel.”

“It sounds characteristic,” murmured Harley, laying the slip on the coffee
table.

“It’s true!” declared Brinn. “I said it and I meant it. I’m a glutton for
danger, Mr. Harley, and I’m going to tell you why. Something happened to
me seven years ago—”

“In India?”

“In India. Correct. Something happened to me, sir, which just took the
sunshine out of life. At the time I didn’t know all it meant. I’ve learned
since. For seven years I have been flirting with death and hoping to
fall!”

Harley stared at him uncomprehendingly. “More than ever I fail to
understand.”

“I can only ask you to be patient, Mr. Harley. Time is a wonderful doctor,
and I don’t say that in seven years the old wound hasn’t healed a bit. But
to-night you have, unknowingly, undone all that time had done. I’m a man
that has been down into hell. I bought myself out. I thought I knew where
the pit was located. I thought I was well away from it, Mr. Harley, and
you have told me something tonight which makes me think that it isn’t
where I supposed at all, but hidden down here right under our feet in
London. And we’re both standing on the edge!”

That Nicol Brinn was deeply moved no student of humanity could have
doubted. From beneath the stoic’s cloak another than the dare-devil
millionaire whose crazy exploits were notorious had looked out.
Persistently the note of danger came to Paul Harley. Those luxurious
Piccadilly chambers were a focus upon which some malignant will was
concentrated. He became conscious of anger. It was the anger of a just man
who finds himself impotent—the rage of Prometheus bound.

“Mr. Brinn!” he cried, “I accept unreservedly all that you have told me.
Its real significance I do not and cannot grasp. But my theory that Sir
Charles Abingdon was done to death has become a conviction. That a like
fate threatens yourself and possibly myself I begin to believe.” He looked
almost fiercely into the other’s dull eyes. “My reputation east and west
is that of a white man. Mr. Brinn—I ask you for your confidence.”

Nicol Brinn dropped his chin into his hand and resumed that unseeing stare
into the open grate. Paul Harley watched him intently.

“There isn’t any one I would rather confide in,” confessed the American.
“We are linked by a common danger. But”—he looked up—“I must
ask you again to be patient. Give me time to think—to make plans.
For your own part—be cautious. You witnessed the death of Sir
Charles Abingdon. You don’t think and perhaps I don’t think that it was
natural; but whatever steps you may have taken to confirm your theories, I
dare not hope that you will ever discover even a ghost of a clue. I simply
warn you, Mr. Harley. You may go the same way. So may I. Others have
travelled that road before poor Abingdon.”

He suddenly stood up, all at once exhibiting to his watchful visitor that
tremendous nervous energy which underlay his impassive manner. “Good God!”
he said, in a cold, even voice. “To think that it is here in London. What
does it mean?”

He ceased speaking abruptly, and stood with his elbow resting on a corner
of the mantelpiece.

“You speak of it being here,” prompted Harley. “Is it consistent with your
mysterious difficulties to inform me to what you refer?”

Nicol Brinn glanced aside at him. “If I informed you of that,” he
answered, “you would know all you want to know. But neither you nor I
would live to use the knowledge. Give me time. Let me think.”

Silence fell in the big room, Nicol Brinn staring down vacantly into the
empty fireplace, Paul Harley standing watching him in a state of almost
stupefied mystification. Muffled to a soothing murmur the sounds of
Piccadilly penetrated to that curtained chamber which held so many records
of the troubled past and which seemed to be charged with shadowy portents
of the future.

Something struck with a dull thud upon a windowpane—once—twice.
There followed a faint, sibilant sound.

Paul Harley started and the stoical Nicol Brinn turned rapidly and glanced
across the room.

“What was that?” asked Harley.

“I expect—it was an owl,” answered Brinn. “We sometimes get them
over from the Green Park.”

His high voice sounded unemotional as ever. But it seemed to Paul Harley
that his face, dimly illuminated by the upcast light from the lamp upon
the coffee table, had paled, had become gaunt.

CHAPTER VI. PHIL ABINGDON ARRIVES

On the following afternoon Paul Harley was restlessly pacing his private
office when Innes came in with a letter which had been delivered by hand.
Harley took it eagerly and tore open the envelope. A look of expectancy
faded from his eager face almost in the moment that it appeared there. “No
luck, Innes,” he said, gloomily. “Merton reports that there is no trace of
any dangerous foreign body in the liquids analyzed.”

He dropped the analyst’s report into a wastebasket and resumed his
restless promenade. Innes, who could see that his principal wanted to
talk, waited. For it was Paul Harley’s custom, when the clue to a
labyrinth evaded him, to outline his difficulties to his confidential
secretary, and by the mere exercise of verbal construction Harley would
often detect the weak spot in his reasoning. This stage come to, he would
dictate a carefully worded statement of the case to date and thus
familiarize himself with its complexities.

“You see, Innes,” he began, suddenly, “Sir Charles had taken no
refreshment of any kind at Mr. Wilson’s house nor before leaving his own.
Neither had he smoked. No one had approached him. Therefore, if he was
poisoned, he was poisoned at his own table. Since he was never out of my
observation from the moment of entering the library up to that of his
death, we are reduced to the only two possible mediums—the soup or
the water. He had touched nothing else.”

“No wine?”

“Wine was on the table but none had been poured out. Let us see what
evidence, capable of being put into writing, exists to support my theory
that Sir Charles was poisoned. In the first place, he clearly went in fear
of some such death. It was because of this that he consulted me. What was
the origin of his fear? Something associated with the term Fire-Tongue. So
much is clear from Sir Charles’s dying words, and his questioning Nicol
Brinn on the point some weeks earlier.

“He was afraid, then, of something or someone linked in his mind with the
word Fire-Tongue. What do we know about Fire-Tongue? One thing only: that
it had to do with some episode which took place in India. This item we owe
to Nicol Brinn.

“Very well. Sir Charles believed himself to be in danger from some thing
or person unknown, associated with India and with the term Fire-Tongue.
What else? His house was entered during the night under circumstances
suggesting that burglary was not the object of the entrance. And next? He
was assaulted, with murderous intent. Thirdly, he believed himself to be
subjected to constant surveillance. Was this a delusion? It was not. After
failing several times I myself detected someone dogging my movements last
night at the moment I entered Nicol Brinn’s chambers. Nicol Brinn also saw
this person.

“In short, Sir Charles was, beyond doubt, at the time of his death,
receiving close attention from some mysterious person or persons the
object of which he believed to be his death. Have I gone beyond
established facts, Innes, thus far?”

“No, Mr. Harley. So far you are on solid ground.”

“Good. Leaving out of the question those points which we hope to clear up
when the evidence of Miss Abingdon becomes available—how did Sir
Charles learn that Nicol Brinn knew the meaning of Fire-Tongue?”

“He may have heard something to that effect in India.”

“If this were so he would scarcely have awaited a chance encounter to
prosecute his inquiries, since Nicol Brinn is a well-known figure in
London and Sir Charles had been home for several years.”

“Mr. Brinn may have said something after the accident and before he was in
full possession of his senses which gave Sir Charles a clue.”

“He did not, Innes. I called at the druggist’s establishment this morning.
They recalled the incident, of course. Mr. Brinn never uttered a word
until, opening his eyes, he said: ‘Hello! Am I much damaged?’”

Innes smiled discreetly. “A remarkable character, Mr. Harley,” he said.
“Your biggest difficulty at the moment is to fit Mr. Nicol Brinn into the
scheme.”

“He won’t fit at all, Innes! We come to the final and conclusive item of
evidence substantiating my theory of Sir Charles’s murder: Nicol Brinn
believes he was murdered. Nicol Brinn has known others, in his own words,
‘to go the same way.’ Yet Nicol Brinn, a millionaire, a scholar, a
sportsman, and a gentleman, refuses to open his mouth.”

“He is afraid of something.”

“He is afraid of Fire-Tongue—whatever Fire-Tongue may be! I never
saw a man of proved courage more afraid in my life. He prefers to court
arrest for complicity in a murder rather than tell what he knows!”

“It’s unbelievable.”

“It would be, Innes, if Nicol Brinn’s fears were personal.”

Paul Harley checked his steps in front of the watchful secretary and gazed
keenly into his eyes.

“Death has no terrors for Nicol Brinn,” he said slowly. “All his life he
has toyed with danger. He admitted to me that during the past seven years
he had courted death. Isn’t it plain enough, Innes? If ever a man
possessed all that the world had to offer, Nicol Brinn is that man. In
such a case and in such circumstances what do we look for?”

Innes shook his head.

“We look for the woman!” snapped Paul Harley.

There came a rap at the door and Miss Smith, the typist, entered. “Miss
Phil Abingdon and Doctor McMurdoch,” she said.

“Good heavens!” muttered Harley. “So soon? Why, she can only just—”
He checked himself. “Show them in, Miss Smith,” he directed.

As the typist went out, followed by Innes, Paul Harley found himself
thinking of the photograph in Sir Charles Abingdon’s library and waiting
with an almost feverish expectancy for the appearance of the original.

Almost immediately Phil Abingdon came in, accompanied by the sepulchral
Doctor McMurdoch. And Harley found himself wondering whether her eyes were
really violet-coloured or whether intense emotion heroically repressed had
temporarily lent them that appearance.

Surprise was the predominant quality of his first impression. Sir Charles
Abingdon’s daughter was so exceedingly vital—petite and slender, yet
instinct with force. The seeming repose of the photograph was misleading.
That her glance could be naive he realized—as it could also be gay—and
now her eyes were sad with a sadness so deep as to dispel the impression
of lightness created by her dainty form, her alluring, mobile lips, and
the fascinating, wavy, red-brown hair.

She did not wear mourning. He recalled that there had been no time to
procure it. She was exquisitely and fashionably dressed, and even the
pallor of grief could not rob her cheeks of the bloom born of Devon
sunshine. He had expected her to be pretty. He was surprised to find her
lovely.

Doctor McMurdoch stood silent in the doorway, saying nothing by way of
introduction. But nothing was necessary. Phil Abingdon came forward quite
naturally—and quite naturally Paul Harley discovered her little
gloved hand to lie clasped between both his own. It was more like a
reunion than a first meeting and was so laden with perfect understanding
that, even yet, speech seemed scarcely worth while.

Thinking over that moment, in later days, Paul Harley remembered that he
had been prompted by some small inner voice to say: “So you have come
back?” It was recognition. Of the hundreds of men and women who came into
his life for a while, and ere long went out of it again, he knew, by
virtue of that sixth sense of his, that Phil Abingdon had come to stay—whether
for joy or sorrow he could not divine.

It was really quite brief—that interval of silence—although
perhaps long enough to bridge the ages.

“How brave of you, Miss Abingdon!” said Harley. “How wonderfully brave of
you!”

“She’s an Abingdon,” came the deep tones of Doctor McMurdoch. “She arrived
only two hours ago and here she is.”

“There can be no rest for me, Doctor,” said the girl, and strove valiantly
to control her voice, “until this dreadful doubt is removed. Mr. Harley”—she
turned to him appealingly—“please don’t study my feelings in the
least; I can bear anything—now; just tell me what happened. Oh! I
had to come. I felt that I had to come.”

As Paul Harley placed an armchair for his visitor, his glance met that of
Doctor McMurdoch, and in the gloomy eyes he read admiration of this girl
who could thus conquer the inherent weakness of her sex and at such an
hour and after a dreadful ordeal set her hand to the task which fate had
laid upon her.

Doctor McMurdoch sat down on a chair beside the door, setting his silk hat
upon the floor and clasping his massive chin with his hand.

“I will endeavour to do as you wish, Miss Abingdon,” said Harley, glancing
anxiously at the physician.

But Doctor McMurdoch returned only a dull stare. It was evident that this
man of stone was as clay in the hands of Phil Abingdon. He deprecated the
strain which she was imposing upon her nervous system, already overwrought
to the danger point, but he was helpless for all his dour obstinacy.
Harley, looking down at the girl’s profile, read a new meaning into the
firm line of her chin. He was conscious of an insane desire to put his
arms around this new acquaintance who seemed in some indefinable yet
definite way to belong to him and to whisper the tragic story he had to
tell, comforting her the while.

He began to relate what had taken place at the first interview, when Sir
Charles had told him of the menace which he had believed to hang over his
life. He spoke slowly, deliberately, choosing his words with a view to
sparing Phil Abingdon’s feelings as far as possible.

She made no comment throughout, but her fingers alternately tightened and
relaxed their hold upon the arms of the chair in which she was seated.
Once, at some reference to words spoken by her father, her sensitive lips
began to quiver and Harley, watching her, paused. She held the chair arms
more tightly. “Please go on, Mr. Harley,” she said.

The words were spoken in a very low voice, but the speaker looked up
bravely, and Harley, reassured, proceeded uninterruptedly to the end of
the story. Then:

“At some future time, Miss Abingdon,” he concluded, “I hope you will allow
me to call upon you. There is so much to be discussed—”

Again Phil Abingdon looked up into his face. “I have forced myself to come
to see you to-day,” she said, “because I realize there is no service I can
do poor dad so important as finding out—”

“I understand,” Harley interrupted, gently. “But—”

“No, no.” Phil Abingdon shook her head rebelliously. “Please ask me what
you want to know. I came for that.”

He met the glance of violet eyes, and understood something of Doctor
McMurdoch’s helplessness. He found his thoughts again wandering into
strange, wild byways and was only recalled to the realities by the dry,
gloomy voice of the physician. “Go on, Mr. Harley,” said Doctor McMurdoch.
“She has grand courage.”

CHAPTER VII. CONFESSIONS

Paul Harley crossed the room and stood in front of the tall Burmese
cabinet. He experienced the utmost difficulty in adopting a judicial
attitude toward his beautiful visitor. Proximity increased his mental
confusion. Therefore he stood on the opposite side of the office ere
beginning to question her.

“In the first place, Miss Abingdon,” he said, speaking very deliberately,
“do you attach any particular significance to the term ‘Fire-Tongue’?”

Phil Abingdon glanced rapidly at Doctor McMurdoch. “None at all, Mr.
Harley,” she replied. “The doctor has already told me of—”

“You know why I ask?” She inclined her head.

“And Mr. Nicol Brinn? Have you met this gentleman?”

“Never. I know that Dad had met him and was very much interested in him.”

“In what way?”

“I have no idea. He told me that he thought Mr. Brinn one of the most
singular characters he had ever known. But beyond describing his rooms in
Piccadilly, which had impressed him as extraordinary, he said very little
about Mr. Brinn. He sounded interesting and “—she hesitated and her
eyes filled with tears—“I asked Dad to invite him home.” Again she
paused. This retrospection, by making the dead seem to live again, added
to the horror of her sudden bereavement, and Harley would most gladly have
spared her more. “Dad seemed strangely disinclined to do so,” she added.

At that the keen investigator came to life within Harley. “Your father did
not appear anxious to bring Mr. Brinn to his home?” he asked, eagerly.

“Not at all anxious. This was all the more strange because Dad invited Mr.
Brinn to his club.”

“He gave no reason for his refusal?”

“Oh, there was no refusal, Mr. Harley. He merely evaded the matter. I
never knew why.”

“H’m,” muttered Harley. “And now, Miss Abingdon, can you enlighten me
respecting the identity of the Oriental gentleman with whom he had
latterly become acquainted?”

Phil Abingdon glanced rapidly at Doctor McMurdoch and then lowered her
head. She did not answer at once. “I know to whom you refer, Mr. Harley,”
she said, finally. “But it was I who had made this gentleman’s
acquaintance. My father did not know him.”

“Then I wonder why he mentioned him?” murmured Harley.

“That I cannot imagine. I have been wondering ever since Doctor McMurdoch
told me.”

“You recognize the person to whom Sir Charles referred?”

“Yes. He could only have meant Ormuz Khan.”

“Ormuz Khan—” echoed Harley. “Where have I heard that name?”

“He visits England periodically, I believe. In fact, he has a house
somewhere near London. I met him at Lady Vail’s.”

“Lady Vail’s? His excellency moves, then, in diplomatic circles? Odd that
I cannot place him.”

“I have a vague idea, Mr. Harley, that he is a financier. I seem to have
heard that he had something to do with the Imperial Bank of Iran.” She
glanced naively at Harley. “Is there such a bank?” she asked.

“There is,” he replied. “Am I to understand that Ormuz Khan is a Persian?”

“I believe he is a Persian,” said Phil Abingdon, rather confusedly. “To be
quite frank, I know very little about him.”

Paul Harley gazed steadily at the speaker for a moment. “Can you think of
any reason why Sir Charles should have worried about this gentleman?” he
asked.

The girl lowered her head again. “He paid me a lot of attention,” she
finally confessed.

“This meeting at Lady Vail’s, then, was the first of many?”

“Oh, no—not of many! I saw him two or three times. But he began to
send me most extravagant presents. I suppose it was his Oriental way of
paying a compliment, but Dad objected.”

“Of course he would. He knew his Orient and his Oriental. I assume, Miss
Abingdon, that you were in England during the years that your father lived
in the East?”

“Yes. I was at school. I have never been in the East.”

Paul Harley hesitated. He found himself upon dangerously delicate ground
and was temporarily at a loss as to how to proceed. Unexpected aid came
from the taciturn Doctor McMurdoch.

“He never breathed a word of this to me, Phil,” he said, gloomily. “The
impudence of the man! Small wonder Abingdon objected.”

Phil Abingdon tilted her chin forward rebelliously.

“Ormuz Khan was merely unfamiliar with English customs,” she retorted.
“There was nothing otherwise in his behaviour to which any one could have
taken exception.”

“What’s that!” demanded the physician. “If a man of colour paid his
heathen attentions to my daughter—”

“But you have no daughter, Doctor.”

“No. But if I had—”

“If you had,” echoed Phil Abingdon, and was about to carry on this wordy
warfare which, Harley divined, was of old standing between the two, when
sudden realization of the purpose of the visit came to her. She paused,
and he saw her biting her lips desperately. Almost at random he began to
speak again.

“So far as you are aware, then, Miss Abingdon, Sir Charles never met Ormuz
Khan?”

“He never even saw him, Mr. Harley, that I know of.”

“It is most extraordinary that he should have given me the impression that
this man—for I can only suppose that he referred to Ormuz Khan—was
in some way associated with his fears.”

“I must remind you, Mr. Harley,” Doctor McMurdoch interrupted, “that poor
Abingdon was a free talker. His pride, I take it, which was strong, had
kept him silent on this matter with me, but he welcomed an opportunity of
easing his mind to one discreet and outside the family circle. His words
to you may have had no bearing upon the thing he wished to consult you
about.”

“H’m,” mused Harley. “That’s possible. But such was not my impression.”

He turned again to Phil Abingdon. “This Ormuz Khan, I understood you to
say, actually resides in or near London?”

“He is at present living at the Savoy, I believe. He also has a house
somewhere outside London.”

There were a hundred other questions Paul Harley was anxious to ask: some
that were professional but more that were personal. He found himself
resenting the intrusion of this wealthy Oriental into the life of the girl
who sat there before him. And because he could read a kindred resentment
in the gloomy eye of Doctor McMurdoch, he was drawn spiritually closer to
that dour character.

By virtue of his training he was a keen psychologist, and he perceived
clearly enough that Phil Abingdon was one of those women in whom a certain
latent perversity is fanned to life by opposition. Whether she was really
attracted by Ormuz Khan or whether she suffered his attentions merely
because she knew them to be distasteful to others, he could not yet
decide.

Anger threatened him—as it had threatened him when he had realized
that Nicol Brinn meant to remain silent. He combated it, for it had no
place in the judicial mind of the investigator. But he recognized its
presence with dismay. Where Phil Abingdon was concerned he could not trust
himself. In her glance, too, and in the manner of her answers to questions
concerning the Oriental, there was a provoking femininity—a
deliberate and baffling intrusion of the eternal Eve.

He stared questioningly across at Doctor McMurdoch and perceived a sudden
look of anxiety in the physician’s face. Quick as the thought which the
look inspired, he turned to Phil Abingdon.

She was sitting quite motionless in the big armchair, and her face had
grown very pale. Even as he sprang forward he saw her head droop.

“She has fainted,” said Doctor McMurdoch. “I’m not surprised.”

“Nor I,” replied Harley. “She should not have come.”

He opened the door communicating with his private apartments and ran out.
But, quick as he was, Phil Abingdon had recovered before he returned with
the water for which he had gone. Her reassuring smile was somewhat wan.
“How perfectly silly of me!” she said. “I shall begin to despise myself.”

Presently he went down to the street with his visitors.

“There must be so much more you want to know, Mr. Harley,” said Phil
Abingdon. “Will you come and see me?”

He promised to do so. His sentiments were so strangely complex that he
experienced a desire for solitude in order that he might strive to
understand them. As he stood at the door watching the car move toward the
Strand he knew that to-day he could not count upon his intuitive powers to
warn him of sudden danger. But he keenly examined the faces of passers-by
and stared at the occupants of those cabs and cars which were proceeding
in the same direction as the late Sir Charles Abingdon’s limousine.

No discovery rewarded him, however, and he returned upstairs to his office
deep in thought. “I am in to nobody,” he said as he passed the desk at
which Innes was at work.

“Very good, Mr. Harley.”

Paul Harley walked through to the private office and, seating himself at
the big, orderly table, reached over to a cupboard beside him and took out
a tin of smoking mixture. He began very slowly to load his pipe, gazing
abstractedly across the room at the tall Burmese cabinet.

He realized that, excepting the extraordinary behaviour and the veiled but
significant statements of Nicol Brinn, his theory that Sir Charles
Abingdon had not died from natural causes rested upon data of the most
flimsy description. From Phil Abingdon he had learned nothing whatever.
Her evidence merely tended to confuse the case more hopelessly.

It was sheer nonsense to suppose that Ormuz Khan, who was evidently
interested in the girl, could be in any way concerned in the death of her
father. Nevertheless, as an ordinary matter of routine, Paul Harley,
having lighted his pipe, made a note on a little block:

Cover activities of Ormuz Khan.

He smoked reflectively for a while and then added another note:

Watch Nicol Brinn.

For ten minutes or more he sat smoking and thinking, his unseeing gaze set
upon the gleaming lacquer of the cabinet; and presently, as he smoked, he
became aware of an abrupt and momentary chill. His sixth sense was awake
again. Taking up a pencil, he added a third note:

Watch yourself. You are in danger.

CHAPTER VIII. A WREATH OF HYACINTHS

Deep in reflection and oblivious of the busy London life around him, Paul
Harley walked slowly along the Strand. Outwardly he was still the
keen-eyed investigator who could pry more deeply into a mystery than any
other in England; but to-day his mood was introspective. He was in a brown
study.

The one figure which had power to recall him to the actual world suddenly
intruded itself upon his field of vision. From dreams which he recognized
in the moment of awakening to have been of Phil Abingdon, he was suddenly
aroused to the fact that Phil Abingdon herself was present. Perhaps, half
subconsciously, he had been looking for her.

Veiled and dressed in black, he saw her slim figure moving through the
throng. He conceived the idea that there was something furtive in her
movements. She seemed to be hurrying along as if desirous of avoiding
recognition. Every now and again she glanced back, evidently in search of
a cab, and a dormant suspicion which had lain in Harley’s mind now became
animate. Phil Abingdon was coming from the direction of the Savoy Hotel.
Was it possible that she had been to visit Ormuz Khan?

Harley crossed the Strand and paused just in front of the hurrying,
black-clad figure. “Miss Abingdon,” he said, “a sort of instinct told me
that I should meet you to-day.”

She stopped suddenly, and through the black veil which she wore he saw her
eyes grow larger—or such was the effect as she opened them widely.
Perhaps he misread their message. To him Phil Abingdon’s expression was
that of detected guilt. More than ever he was convinced of the truth of
his suspicions. “Perhaps you were looking for a cab?” he suggested.

Overcoming her surprise, or whatever emotion had claimed her at the moment
of this unexpected meeting, Phil Abingdon took Harley’s outstretched hand
and held it for a moment before replying. “I had almost despaired of
finding one,” she said, “and I am late already.”

“The porter at the Savoy would get you one.”

“I have tried there and got tired of waiting,” she answered quite simply.

For a moment Harley’s suspicions were almost dispelled, and, observing an
empty cab approaching, he signalled to the man to pull up.

“Where do you want to go to?” he inquired, opening the door.

“I am due at Doctor McMurdoch’s,” she replied, stepping in.

Paul Harley hesitated, glancing from the speaker to the driver.

“I wonder if you have time to come with me,” said Phil Abingdon. “I know
the doctor wants to see you.”

“I will come with pleasure,” replied Harley, a statement which was no more
than true.

Accordingly he gave the necessary directions to the taxi man and seated
himself beside the girl in the cab.

“I am awfully glad of an opportunity of a chat with you, Mr. Harley,” said
Phil Abingdon. “The last few days have seemed like one long nightmare to
me.” She sighed pathetically. “Surely Doctor McMurdoch is right, and all
the horrible doubts which troubled us were idle ones, after all?”

She turned to Harley, looking almost eagerly into his face. “Poor daddy
hadn’t an enemy in the world, I am sure,” she said. “His extraordinary
words to you no doubt have some simple explanation. Oh, it would be such a
relief to know that his end was a natural one. At least it would dull the
misery of it all a little bit.”

The appeal in her eyes was of a kind which Harley found much difficulty in
resisting. It would have been happiness to offer consolation to this
sorrowing girl. But, although he could not honestly assure her that he had
abandoned his theories, he realized that the horror of her suspicions was
having a dreadful effect upon Phil Abingdon’s mind.

“You may quite possibly be right,” he said, gently. “In any event, I hope
you will think as little as possible about the morbid side of this unhappy
business.”

“I try to,” she assured him, earnestly, “but you can imagine how hard the
task is. I know that you must have some good reason for your idea;
something, I mean, other than the mere words which have puzzled us all so
much. Won’t you tell me?”

Now, Paul Harley had determined, since the girl was unacquainted with
Nicol Brinn, to conceal from her all that he had learned from that
extraordinary man. In this determination he had been actuated, too, by the
promptings of the note of danger which, once seemingly attuned to the
movements of Sir Charles Abingdon, had, after the surgeon’s death,
apparently become centred upon himself and upon Nicol Brinn. He dreaded
the thought that the cloud might stretch out over the life of this girl
who sat beside him and whom he felt so urgently called upon to protect
from such a menace.

The cloud? What was this cloud, whence did it emanate, and by whom had it
been called into being? He looked into the violet eyes, and as a while
before he had moved alone through the wilderness of London now he seemed
to be alone with Phil Abingdon on the border of a spirit world which had
no existence for the multitudes around. Psychically, he was very close to
her at that moment; and when he replied he replied evasively: “I have
absolutely no scrap of evidence, Miss Abingdon, pointing to foul play. The
circumstances were peculiar, of course, but I have every confidence in
Doctor McMurdoch’s efficiency. Since he is satisfied, it would be mere
impertinence on my part to question his verdict.”

Phil Abingdon repeated the weary sigh and turned her head aside, glancing
down to where with one small shoe she was restlessly tapping the floor of
the cab. They were both silent for some moments.

“Don’t you trust me?” she asked, suddenly. “Or don’t you think I am clever
enough to share your confidence?”

As she spoke she looked at him challengingly, and he felt all the force of
personality which underlay her outward lightness of manner.

“I both trust you and respect your intelligence,” he answered, quietly.
“If I withhold anything from you, I am prompted by a very different motive
from the one you suggest.”

“Then you are keeping something from me,” she said, softly. “I knew you
were.”

“Miss Abingdon,” replied Harley, “when the worst trials of this affair are
over, I want to have a long talk with you. Until then, won’t you believe
that I am acting for the best?”

But Phil Abingdon’s glance was unrelenting.

“In your opinion it may be so, but you won’t do me the honour of
consulting mine.”

Harley had half anticipated this attitude, but had hoped that she would
not adopt it. She possessed in a high degree the feminine art of provoking
a quarrel. But he found much consolation in the fact that she had thus
shifted the discussion from the abstract to the personal. He smiled
slightly, and Phil Abingdon’s expression relaxed in response and she
lowered her eyes quickly. “Why do you persistently treat me like a child?”
she said.

“I don’t know,” replied Harley, delighted but bewildered by her sudden
change of mood. “Perhaps because I want to.”

She did not answer him, but stared abstractedly out of the cab window; and
Harley did not break this silence, much as he would have liked to do so.
He was mentally reviewing his labours of the preceding day when, in the
character of a Colonial visitor with much time on his hands, he had
haunted the Savoy for hours in the hope of obtaining a glimpse of Ormuz
Khan. His vigil had been fruitless, and on returning by a roundabout route
to his office he had bitterly charged himself with wasting valuable time
upon a side issue. Yet when, later, he had sat in his study endeavouring
to arrange his ideas in order, he had discovered many points in his own
defence.

If his ineffective surveillance of Ormuz Khan had been dictated by
interest in Phil Abingdon rather than by strictly professional motives, it
was, nevertheless, an ordinary part of the conduct of such a case. But
while he had personally undertaken the matter of his excellency he had
left the work of studying the activities of Nicol Brinn to an assistant.
He could not succeed in convincing himself that, on the evidence
available, the movements of the Oriental gentleman were more important
than those of the American.

“Here we are,” said Phil Abingdon.

She alighted, and Harley dismissed the cabman and followed the girl into
Doctor McMurdoch’s house. Here he made the acquaintance of Mrs. McMurdoch,
who, as experience had taught him to anticipate, was as plump and merry
and vivacious as her husband was lean, gloomy, and taciturn. But she was a
perfect well of sympathy, as her treatment of the bereaved girl showed.
She took her in her arms and hugged her in a way that was good to see.

“We were waiting for you, dear,” she said when the formality of presenting
Harley was over. “Are you quite sure that you want to go?”

Phil Abingdon nodded pathetically. She had raised her veil, and Harley
could see that her eyes were full of tears. “I should like to see the
flowers,” she answered.

She was staying at the McMurdochs’ house, and as the object at present in
view was that of a visit to her old home, from which the funeral of Sir
Charles Abingdon was to take place on the morrow, Harley became suddenly
conscious of the fact that his presence was inopportune.

“I believe you want to see me, Doctor McMurdoch,” he said, turning to the
dour physician. “Shall I await your return or do you expect to be
detained?”

But Phil Abingdon had her own views on the matter. She stepped up beside
him and linked her arm in his.

“Please come with me, Mr. Harley,” she pleaded. “I want you to.”

As a result he found himself a few minutes later entering the hall of the
late Sir Charles’s house. The gloved hand resting on his arm trembled, but
when he looked down solicitously into Phil Abingdon’s face she smiled
bravely, and momentarily her clasp tightened as if to reassure him.

It seemed quite natural that she should derive comfort from the presence
of this comparative stranger; and neither of the two, as they stood there
looking at the tributes to the memory of the late Sir Charles—which
overflowed from a neighbouring room into the lobby and were even piled
upon the library table—were conscious of any strangeness in the
situation.

The first thing that had struck Harley on entering the house had been an
overpowering perfume of hyacinths. Now he saw whence it arose; for,
conspicuous amid the wreaths and crosses, was an enormous device formed of
hyacinths. Its proportions dwarfed those of all the others.

Mrs. Howett, the housekeeper, a sad-eyed little figure, appeared now from
behind the bank of flowers. Her grief could not rob her of that Old World
manner which was hers, and she saluted the visitors with a bow which
promised to develop into a curtsey. Noting the direction of Phil
Abingdon’s glance, which was set upon a card attached to the wreath of
hyacinths: “It was the first to arrive, Miss Phil,” she said. “Isn’t it
beautiful?”

“It’s wonderful,” said the girl, moving forward and drawing Harley along
with her. She glanced from the card up to his face, which was set in a
rather grim expression.

“Ormuz Khan has been so good,” she said. “He sent his secretary to see if
he could be of any assistance yesterday, but I certainly had not expected
this.”

Her eyes filled with tears again, and, because he thought they were tears
of gratitude, Harley clenched his hand tightly so that the muscles of his
forearm became taut to Phil Abingdon’s touch. She looked up at him,
smiling pathetically: “Don’t you think it was awfully kind of him?” she
asked.

“Very,” replied Harley.

A dry and sepulchral cough of approval came from Doctor McMurdoch; and
Harley divined with joy that when the ordeal of the next day was over Phil
Abingdon would have to face cross-examination by the conscientious
Scotsman respecting this stranger whose attentions, if Orientally
extravagant, were instinct with such generous sympathy.

For some reason the heavy perfume of the hyacinths affected him
unpleasantly. All his old doubts and suspicions found a new life, so that
his share in the conversation which presently arose became confined to a
few laconic answers to direct questions.

He was angry, and his anger was more than half directed against himself,
because he knew that he had no shadow of right to question this girl about
her friendships or even to advise her. He determined, however, even at the
cost of incurring a rebuke, to urge Doctor McMurdoch to employ all the
influence he possessed to terminate an acquaintanceship which could not be
otherwise than undesirable, if it was not actually dangerous.

When, presently, the party returned to the neighbouring house of the
physician, however, Harley’s plans in this respect were destroyed by the
action of Doctor McMurdoch, in whose composition tact was not a
predominant factor. Almost before they were seated in the doctor’s drawing
room he voiced his disapproval. “Phil,” he said, ignoring a silent appeal
from his wife, “this is, mayhap, no time to speak of the matter, but I’m
not glad to see the hyacinths.”

Phil Abingdon’s chin quivered rebelliously, and, to Harley’s dismay, it
was upon him that she fixed her gaze in replying. “Perhaps you also
disapprove of his excellency’s kindness?” she said, indignantly.

Harley found himself temporarily at a loss for words. She was perfectly
well aware that he disapproved, and now was taking a cruel pleasure in
reminding him of the fact that he was not entitled to do so. Had he been
capable of that calm analysis to which ordinarily he submitted all
psychological problems, he must have found matter for rejoicing in this
desire of the girl’s to hurt him. “I am afraid, Miss Abingdon,” he
replied, quietly, “that the matter is not one in which I am entitled to
express my opinion.”

She continued to look at him challengingly, but:

“Quite right, Mr. Harley,” said Doctor McMurdoch, “but if you were, your
opinion would be the same as mine.”

Mrs. McMurdoch’s glance became positively beseeching, but the physician
ignored it. “As your father’s oldest friend,” he continued, “I feel called
upon to remark that it isn’t usual for strangers to thrust their
attentions upon a bereaved family.”

“Oh,” said Phil Abingdon with animation, “do I understand that this is
also your opinion, Mr. Harley?”

“As a man of the world,” declared Doctor McMurdoch, gloomily, “it cannot
fail to be.”

Tardily enough he now succumbed to the silent entreaties of his wife. “I
will speak of this later,” he concluded. “Mayhap I should not have spoken
now.”

Tears began to trickle down Phil Abingdon’s cheeks.

“Oh, my dear, my dear!” cried little Mrs. McMurdoch, running to her side.

But the girl sprang up, escaping from the encircling arm of the motherly
old lady. She shook her head disdainfully, as if to banish tears and
weakness, and glanced rapidly around from face to face. “I think you are
all perfectly cruel and horrible,” she said in a choking voice, turned,
and ran out.

A distant door banged.

“H’m,” muttered Doctor McMurdoch, “I’ve put my foot in it.”

His wife looked at him in speechless indignation and then followed Phil
Abingdon from the room.

CHAPTER IX. TWO REPORTS

On returning to his office Paul Harley found awaiting him the report of
the man to whom he had entrusted the study of the movements of Nicol
Brinn. His mood was a disturbed one, and he had observed none of his
customary precautions in coming from Doctor McMurdoch’s house. He wondered
if the surveillance which he had once detected had ceased. Perhaps the
chambers of Nicol Brinn were the true danger zone upon which these subtle
but powerful forces now were focussed. On the other hand, he was quite
well aware that his movements might have been watched almost
uninterruptedly since the hour that Sir Charles Abingdon had visited his
office.

During the previous day, in his attempt to learn the identity of Ormuz
Khan, he had covered his tracks with his customary care. He had sufficient
faith in his knowledge of disguise, which was extensive, to believe that
those mysterious persons who were interested in his movements remained
unaware of the fact that the simple-minded visitor from Vancouver who had
spent several hours in and about the Savoy, and Paul Harley of Chancery
Lane, were one and the same.

His brain was far too alertly engaged with troubled thoughts of Phil
Abingdon to be susceptible to the influence of those delicate etheric
waves which he had come to recognize as the note of danger. Practically
there had been no development whatever in the investigation, and he was
almost tempted to believe that the whole thing was a mirage, when the
sight of the typewritten report translated him mentally to the luxurious
chambers in Piccadilly.

Again, almost clairvoyantly, he saw the stoical American seated before the
empty fireplace, his foot restlessly tapping the fender. Again he heard
the curious, high tones: “I’ll tell you... You have opened the gates of
hell....”

The whole scene, with its tantalizing undercurrent of mystery, was
reenacted before his inner vision. He seemed to hear Nicol Brinn, startled
from his reverie, exclaim: “I think it was an owl.... We sometimes get
them over from the Green Park....”

Why should so simple an incident have produced so singular an effect? For
the face of the speaker had been ashen.

Then the pendulum swung inevitably back: “You are all perfectly cruel and
horrible....”

Paul Harley clenched his hands, frowning at the Burmese cabinet as though
he hated it.

How persistently the voice of Phil Abingdon rang in his ears! He could not
forget her lightest words. How hopelessly her bewitching image intruded
itself between his reasoning mind and the problem upon which he sought to
concentrate.

Miss Smith, the typist, had gone, for it was after six o’clock, and Innes
alone was on duty. He came in as Harley, placing his hat and cane upon the
big writing table, sat down to study the report.

“Inspector Wessex rang up, Mr. Harley, about an hour ago. He said he would
be at the Yard until six.”

“Has he obtained any information?” asked Paul Harley, wearily, glancing at
his little table clock.

“He said he had had insufficient time to do much in the matter, but that
there were one or two outstanding facts which might interest you.”

“Did he seem to be surprised?”

“He did,” confessed Innes. “He said that Ormuz Khan was a well-known
figure in financial circles, and asked me in what way you were interested
in him.”

“Ah!” murmured Harley. He took up the telephone. “City 400,” he said....
“Is that the Commissioner’s Office, New Scotland Yard? ... Paul Harley
speaking. Would you please inquire if Detective Inspector Wessex has
gone?”

While awaiting a reply he looked up at Innes. “Is there anything else?” he
asked.

“Only the letters, Mr. Harley.”

“No callers?”

“No.”

“Leave the letters, then; I will see to them. You need not wait.” A moment
later, as his secretary bade him good-night and went out of the office:

“Hello,” said Harley, speaking into the mouthpiece... “The inspector has
gone? Perhaps you would ask him to ring me up in the morning.” He replaced
the receiver on the hook.

Resting his chin in his hands, he began to read from the typewritten pages
before him. His assistant’s report was conceived as follows:

‘Re Mr. Nicol Brinn of Raleigh House, Piccadilly, W. I.

‘Mr. Nicol Brinn is an American citizen, born at Cincinnati, Ohio,
February 15, 1884. He is the son of John Nicolas Brinn of the same city,
founder of the firm of J. Nicolas Brinn, Incorporated, later reconstituted
under the style of Brinn’s Universal Electric Supply Corporation.

‘Nicol Brinn is a graduate of Harvard. He has travelled extensively in
nearly all parts of the world and has access to the best society of Europe
and America. He has a reputation for eccentricity, has won numerous
sporting events as a gentleman rider; was the first airman to fly over the
Rockies; took part in the Uruguay rebellion of 1904, and held the rank of
lieutenant colonel of field artillery with the American forces during the
Great War.

‘He has published a work on big game and has contributed numerous travel
articles to American periodicals. On the death of Mr. Brinn, senior, in
1914, he inherited an enormous fortune and a preponderating influence in
the B.U.E.S.C. He has never taken any active part in conduct of the
concern, but has lived a restless and wandering life in various parts of
the world.

‘Mr. Nicol Brinn is a confirmed bachelor. I have been unable to find that
he has ever taken the slightest interest in any woman other than his
mother throughout his career. Mrs. J. Nicolas Brinn is still living in
Cincinnati, and there is said to be a strong bond of affection between
mother and son. His movements on yesterday, 4th June, 1921, were as
follows:

‘He came out of his chambers at eight o’clock and rode for an hour in the
park, when he returned and remained indoors until midday. He then drove to
the Carlton, where he lunched with the Foreign Secretary, with whom he
remained engaged in earnest conversation until ten minutes to three. The
Rt. Hon. gentleman proceeded to the House of Commons and Mr. Brinn to an
auction at Christie’s. He bought two oil paintings. He then returned to
his chambers and did not reappear again until seven o’clock. He dined
alone at a small and unfashionable restaurant in Soho, went on to his box
at Covent Garden, where he remained for an hour, also alone, and then went
home. He had no callers throughout the day.’

Deliberately Paul Harley had read the report, only removing his hand from
his chin to turn over the pages. Now from the cabinet at his elbow he took
out his tin of tobacco and, filling and lighting a pipe, lay back, eyes
half closed, considering what he had learned respecting Nicol Brinn.

That he was concerned in the death of Sir Charles Abingdon he did not
believe for a moment; but that this elusive case, which upon investigation
only seemed the more obscure, was nevertheless a case of deliberate murder
he was as firmly convinced as ever. Of the identity of the murderer, of
his motive, he had not the haziest idea, but that the cloud which he had
pictured as overhanging the life of the late Sir Charles was a reality and
not a myth of the imagination he became more completely convinced with
each new failure to pick up a clue.

He found himself helplessly tied. In which direction should he move and to
what end? Inclination prompted him in one direction, common sense held him
back. As was his custom, he took a pencil and wrote upon a little block:

Find means to force Brinn to speak.

He lay back in his chair again, deep in thought, and presently added the
note:

Obtain interview with Ormuz Khan.

Just as he replaced the pencil on the table, his telephone bell rang. The
caller proved to be his friend, Inspector Wessex.

“Hello, Mr. Harley,” said the inspector. “I had occasion to return to the
Yard, and they told me you had rung up. I don’t know why you are
interested in this Ormuz Khan, unless you want to raise a loan.”

Paul Harley laughed. “I gather that he is a man of extensive means,” he
replied, “but hitherto he has remained outside my radius of observation.”

“And outside mine,” declared the inspector. “He hasn’t the most distant
connection with anything crooked. It gave me a lot of trouble to find out
what little I have found out. Briefly, all I have to tell you is this:
Ormuz Khan—who is apparently entitled to be addressed as ‘his
excellency’—is a director of the Imperial Bank of Iran, and is
associated, too, with one of the Ottoman banks. I presume his nationality
is Persian, but I can’t be sure of it. He periodically turns up in the
various big capitals when international loans and that sort of thing are
being negotiated. I understand that he has a flat somewhere in Paris, and
the Service de Surete tells me that his name is good for several million
francs over there. He appears to have a certain fondness for London during
the spring and early summer months, and I am told he has a fine place in
Surrey. He is at present living at Savoy Court. He appears to be something
of a dandy and to be very partial to the fair sex, but nevertheless there
is nothing wrong with his reputation,considering, I mean, that the man is
a sort of Eastern multimillionaire.”

“Ah!” said Harley, who had been listening eagerly. “Is that the extent of
your information, Wessex?”

“That’s it,” replied Wessex, with a laugh. “I hope you’ll find it useful,
but I doubt it. He hasn’t been picking pockets or anything, has he?”

“No,” said Harley, shortly. “I don’t apprehend that his excellency will
ever appear in your province, Wessex. My interest in him is of a purely
personal nature. Thanks for all the trouble you have taken.”

Paul Harley began to pace the office. From a professional point of view
the information was uninteresting enough, but from another point of view
it had awakened again that impotent anger which he had too often
experienced in these recent, strangely restless days.

At all costs he must see Ormuz Khan, although how he was to obtain access
to this man who apparently never left his private apartments (if the day
of his vigil at the Savoy had been a typical one) he failed to imagine.

Nevertheless, pausing at the table, he again took up his pencil, and to
the note “Obtain interview with Ormuz Khan” he added the one word,
underlined:

“To-morrow.”

CHAPTER X. HIS EXCELLENCY ORMUZ KHAN

The city clocks were chiming the hour of ten on the following morning when
a page from the Savoy approached the shop of Mr. Jarvis, bootmaker, which
is situated at no great distance from the hotel. The impudent face of the
small boy wore an expression of serio-comic fright as he pushed open the
door and entered the shop.

Jarvis, the bootmaker, belonged to a rapidly disappearing class of British
tradesmen. He buckled to no one, but took an artistic pride in his own
handiwork, criticism from a layman merely provoking a scornful anger which
had lost Jarvis many good customers.

He was engaged, at the moment of the page’s entrance, in a little fitting
room at the back of his cramped premises, but through the doorway the boy
could see the red, bespectacled face with its fringe of bristling white
beard, in which he detected all the tokens of brewing storm. He whistled
softly in self-sympathy.

“Yes, sir,” Jarvis was saying to an invisible patron, “it’s a welcome
sight to see a real Englishman walk into my shop nowadays. London isn’t
London, sir, since the war, and the Strand will never be the Strand
again.” He turned to his assistant, who stood beside him, bootjack in
hand. “If he sends them back again,” he directed, “tell him to go to one
of the French firms in Regent Street who cater to dainty ladies.” He
positively snorted with indignation, while the page, listening, whistled
again and looked down at the parcel which he carried.

“An unwelcome customer, Jarvis?” inquired the voice of the man in the
fitting room.

“Quite unwelcome,” said Jarvis. “I don’t want him. I have more work than I
know how to turn out. I wish he would go elsewhere. I wish—”

He paused. He had seen the page boy. The latter, having undone his parcel,
was holding out a pair of elegant, fawn-coloured shoes.

“Great Moses!” breathed Jarvis. “He’s had the cheek to send them back
again!”

“His excellency—” began the page, when Jarvis snatched the shoes
from his hand and hurled them to the other end of the shop. His white
beard positively bristled.

“Tell his excellency,” he shouted, “to go to the devil, with my
compliments!”

So positively ferocious was his aspect that the boy, with upraised arm,
backed hastily out into the street. Safety won: “Blimey!” exclaimed the
youth. “He’s the warm goods, he is!”

He paused for several moments, staring in a kind of stupefied admiration
at the closed door of Mr. Jarvis’s establishment. He whistled again,
softly, and then began to run—for the formidable Mr. Jarvis suddenly
opened the door. “Hi, boy!” he called to the page. The page hesitated,
glancing back doubtfully. “Tell his excellency that I will send round in
about half an hour to remeasure his foot.”

“D’you mean it?” inquired the boy, impudently—“or is there a catch
in it?”

“I’ll tan your hide, my lad!” cried the bootmaker—“and I mean that!
Take my message and keep your mouth shut.”

The boy departed, grinning, and little more than half an hour later a
respectable-looking man presented himself at Savoy Court, inquiring of the
attendant near the elevator for the apartments of “his excellency,”
followed by an unintelligible word which presumably represented “Ormuz
Khan.” The visitor wore a well-brushed but threadbare tweed suit, although
his soft collar was by no means clean. He had a short, reddish-brown
beard, and very thick, curling hair of the same hue protruded from beneath
a bowler hat which had seen long service.

Like Mr. Jarvis, he was bespectacled, and his teeth were much discoloured
and apparently broken in front, as is usual with cobblers. His hands, too,
were toil-stained and his nails very black. He carried a cardboard box. He
seemed to be extremely nervous, and this nervousness palpably increased
when the impudent page, who was standing in the lobby, giggled on hearing
his inquiry.

“He’s second floor,” said the youth. “Are you from Hot-Stuff Jarvis?”

“That’s right, lad,” replied the visitor, speaking with a marked
Manchester accent; “from Mr. Jarvis.”

“And are you really going up?” inquired the boy with mock solicitude.

“I’m going up right enough. That’s what I’m here for.”

“Shut up, Chivers,” snapped the hall porter. “Ring the bell.” He glanced
at the cobbler. “Second floor,” he said, tersely, and resumed his study of
a newspaper which he had been reading.

The representative of Mr. Jarvis was carried up to the second floor and
the lift man, having indicated at which door he should knock, descended
again. The cobbler’s nervousness thereupon became more marked than ever,
so that a waiter, seeing him looking helplessly from door to door, took
pity on him and inquired for whom he was searching.

“His excellency,” was the reply; “but I’m hanged if I can remember the
number or how to pronounce his name.”

The waiter glanced at him oddly. “Ormuz Khan,” he said, and rang the bell
beside a door. As he hurried away, “Good luck!” he called back.

There was a short interval, and then the door was opened by a man who
looked like a Hindu. He wore correct morning dress and through gold-rimmed
pince-nez he stared inquiringly at the caller.

“Is his excellency at home?” asked the latter. “I’m from Mr. Jarvis, the
bootmaker.”

“Oh!” said the other, smiling slightly. “Come in. What is your name?”

“Parker, sir. From Mr. Jarvis.”

As the door closed, Parker found himself in a small lobby. Beside an
umbrella rack a high-backed chair was placed. “Sit down,” he was directed.
“I will tell his excellency that you are here.”

A door was opened and closed again, and Parker found himself alone. He
twirled his bowler hat, which he held in his hand, and stared about the
place vacantly. Once he began to whistle, but checked himself and coughed
nervously. Finally the Hindu gentleman reappeared, beckoning to him to
enter.

Parker stood up very quickly and advanced, hat in hand.

Then he remembered the box which he had left on the floor, and, stooping
to recover it, he dropped his hat. But at last, leaving his hat upon the
chair and carrying the box under his arm, he entered a room which had been
converted into a very businesslike office.

There was a typewriter upon a table near the window at which someone had
evidently been at work quite recently, and upon a larger table in the
centre of the room were dispatch boxes, neat parcels of documents,
ledgers, works of reference, and all the evidence of keen commercial
activity. Crossing the room, the Hindu rapped upon an inner door, opened
it, and standing aside, “The man from the bootmaker,” he said in a low
voice.

Parker advanced, peering about him as one unfamiliar with his
surroundings. As he crossed the threshold the door was closed behind him,
and he found himself in a superheated atmosphere heavy with the perfume of
hyacinths.

The place was furnished as a sitting room, but some of its appointments
were obviously importations. Its keynote was orientalism, not of that
sensuous yet grossly masculine character which surrounds the wealthy
Eastern esthete but quite markedly feminine. There were an extraordinary
number of cushions, and many bowls and vases containing hyacinths. What
other strange appointments were present Parker was far too nervous to
observe.

He stood dumbly before a man who lolled back in a deep, cushioned chair
and whose almond-shaped eyes, black as night, were set immovably upon him.
This man was apparently young. He wore a rich, brocaded robe, trimmed with
marten fur, and out of it his long ivory throat rose statuesquely. His
complexion was likewise of this uniform ivory colour, and from his low
smooth brow his hair was brushed back in a series of glossy black waves.

His lips were full and very red. As a woman he might have been considered
handsome—even beautiful; in a man this beauty was unnatural and
repellent. He wore Oriental slippers, fur-lined, and his feet rested on a
small ottoman. One long, slender hand lay upon a cushion placed on the
chair arm, and a pretty girl was busily engaged in manicuring his
excellency’s nails. Although the day held every promise of being
uncomfortably hot, already a huge fire was burning in the grate.

As Parker stood before him, the languid, handsome Oriental did not stir a
muscle, merely keeping the gaze of his strange black eyes fixed upon the
nervous cobbler. The manicurist, after one quick upward glance, continued
her work. But in this moment of distraction she had hurt the cuticle of
one of those delicate, slender fingers.

Ormuz Khan withdrew his hand sharply from the cushion, glanced aside at
the girl, and then, extending his hand again, pushed her away from him.
Because of her half-kneeling posture, she almost fell, but managed to
recover herself by clutching at the edge of a little table upon which the
implements of her trade were spread. The table rocked and a bowl of water
fell crashing on the carpet. His excellency spoke. His voice was very
musical.

“Clumsy fool,” he said. “You have hurt me. Go.”

The girl became very white and began to gather up the articles upon the
table. “I am sorry,” she said, “but—”

“I do not wish you to speak,” continued the musical voice; “only to go.”

Hurriedly collecting the remainder of the implements and placing them in
an attache case, the manicurist hurried from the room. Her eyes were
overbright and her lips pathetically tremulous. Ormuz Khan never glanced
in her direction again, but resumed his disconcerting survey of Parker.
“Yes?” he said.

Parker bumblingly began to remove the lid of the cardboard box which he
had brought with him.

“I do not wish you to alter the shoes you have made,” said his excellency.
“I instructed you to remeasure my foot in order that you might make a pair
to fit.”

“Yes, sir,” said Parker. “Quite so, your excellency.” And he dropped the
box and the shoes upon the floor. “Just a moment, sir?”

From an inner pocket he drew out a large sheet of white paper, a pencil,
and a tape measure. “Will you place your foot upon this sheet of paper,
sir?”

Ormuz Khan raised his right foot listlessly.

“Slipper off, please, sir.”

“I am waiting,” replied the other, never removing his gaze from Parker’s
face.

“Oh, I beg your pardon sir, your excellency,” muttered the bootmaker.

Dropping upon one knee, he removed the furred slipper from a slender,
arched foot, bare, of the delicate colour of ivory, and as small as a
woman’s.

“Now, sir.”

The ivory foot was placed upon the sheet of paper, and very clumsily
Parker drew its outline. He then took certain measurements and made a
number of notes with a stub of thick pencil. Whenever his none too clean
hands touched Ormuz Khan’s delicate skin the Oriental perceptibly
shuddered.

“Of course, sir,” said Parker at last, “I should really have taken your
measurement with the sock on.”

“I wear only the finest silk.”

“Very well, sir. As you wish.”

Parker replaced paper, pencil, and measure, and, packing up the rejected
shoes, made for the door.

“Oh, bootmaker!” came the musical voice.

Parker turned. “Yes, sir?”

“They will be ready by Monday?”

“If possible, your excellency.”

“Otherwise I shall not accept them.”

Ormuz Khan drew a hyacinth from a vase close beside him and languidly
waved it in dismissal.

In the outer room the courteous secretary awaited Parker, and there was
apparently no one else in the place, for the Hindu conducted him to the
lobby and opened the door.

Parker said “Good morning, sir,” and would have departed without his hat
had not the secretary smilingly handed it to him.

When, presently, the cobbler emerged from the elevator, below, he paused
before leaving the hotel to mop his perspiring brow with a large, soiled
handkerchief. The perfume of hyacinths seemed to have pursued him,
bringing with it a memory of the handsome, effeminate ivory face of the
man above. He was recalled to his senses by the voice of the impudent
page.

“Been kicked out, gov’nor?” the youth inquired. “You’re the third this
morning.”

“Is that so?” answered Parker. “Who were the other two, lad?”

“The girl wot comes to do his nails. A stunnin’ bird, too. She came down
cryin’ a few minutes ago. Then—”

“Shut up, Chivers!” cried the hall porter. “You’re asking for the sack,
and I’m the man to get it for you.”

Chivers did not appear to be vastly perturbed by this prospect, and he
grinned agreeably at Parker as the latter made his way out into the
courtyard.

Any one sufficiently interested to have done so might have found matter
for surprise had he followed that conscientious bootmaker as he left the
hotel. He did not proceed to the shop of Mr. Jarvis, but, crossing the
Strand, mounted a city-bound motor bus and proceeded eastward upon it as
far as the Law Courts. Here he dismounted and plunged into that maze of
tortuous lanes which dissects the triangle formed by Chancery Lane and
Holborn.

His step was leisurely, and once he stopped to light his pipe, peering
with interest into the shop window of a law stationer. Finally he came to
another little shop which had once formed part of a private house. It was
of the lock-up variety, and upon the gauze blind which concealed the
interior appeared the words: “The Chancery Agency.”

Whether the Chancery Agency was a press agency, a literary or a dramatic
agency, was not specified, but Mr. Parker was evidently well acquainted
with the establishment, for he unlocked the door with a key which he
carried and, entering a tiny shop, closed and locked the door behind him
again.

The place was not more than ten yards square and the ceiling was very low.
It was barely furnished as an office, but evidently Mr. Parker’s business
was not of a nature to detain him here. There was a second door to be
unlocked; and beyond it appeared a flight of narrow stairs—at some
time the servant’s stair of the partially demolished house which had
occupied that site in former days. Relocking this door in turn, Mr. Parker
mounted the stair and presently found himself in a spacious and
well-furnished bedroom.

This bedroom contained an extraordinary number of wardrobes, and a big
dressing table with wing mirrors lent a theatrical touch to the apartment.
This was still further enhanced by the presence of all sorts of wigs,
boxes of false hair, and other items of make-up. At the table Mr. Parker
seated himself, and when, half an hour later, the bedroom door was opened,
it was not Mr. Parker who crossed the book-lined study within and walked
through to the private office where Innes was seated writing. It was Mr.
Paul Harley.

CHAPTER XI. THE PURPLE STAIN

For more than an hour Harley sat alone, smoking, neglectful of the routine
duties which should have claimed his attention. His face was set and grim,
and his expression one of total abstraction. In spirit he stood again in
that superheated room at the Savoy. Sometimes, as he mused, he would smoke
with unconscious vigour, surrounding himself with veritable fog banks. An
imaginary breath of hyacinths would have reached him, to conjure up
vividly the hateful, perfumed environment of Ormuz Khan.

He was savagely aware of a great mental disorderliness. He recognized that
his brain remained a mere whirlpool from which Phyllis Abingdon, the
deceased Sir Charles, Nicol Brinn, and another, alternately arose to claim
supremacy. He clenched his teeth upon the mouthpiece of his pipe.

But after some time, although rebelliously, his thoughts began to marshal
themselves in a certain definite formation. And outstanding, alone,
removed from the ordinary, almost from the real, was the bizarre
personality of Ormuz Khan.

The data concerning the Oriental visitor, as supplied by Inspector Wessex,
had led him to expect quite a different type of character. Inured as Paul
Harley was to surprise, his first sentiment as he had set eyes upon the
man had been one of sheer amazement.

“Something of a dandy,” inadequately described the repellent sensuousness
of this veritable potentate, who could contrive to invest a sitting room
in a modern hotel with the atmosphere of a secret Eastern household. To
consider Ormuz Khan in connection with matters of international finance
was wildly incongruous, while the manicurist incident indicated an
inherent cruelty only possible in one of Oriental race.

In a mood of complete mental detachment Paul Harley found himself looking
again into those black, inscrutable eyes and trying to analyze the elusive
quality of their regard. They were unlike any eyes that he had met with.
It were folly to count their possessor a negligible quantity.
Nevertheless, it was difficult, because of the fellow’s scented
effeminacy, to believe that women could find him attractive. But Harley,
wise in worldly lore, perceived that the mystery surrounding Ormuz Khan
must make a strong appeal to a certain type of female mind. He was forced
to admit that some women, indeed many, would be as clay in the hands of
the man who possessed those long-lashed, magnetic eyes.

He thought of the pretty manicurist. Mortification he had read in her
white face, and pain; but no anger. Yes, Ormuz Khan was dangerous.

In what respect was he dangerous?

“Phil Abingdon!” Harley whispered, and, in the act of breathing the name,
laughed at his own folly.

In the name of reason, he mused, what could she find to interest her in a
man of Ormuz Khan’s type? He was prepared to learn that there was a mystic
side to her personality—a phase in her character which would be
responsive to the outre and romantic. But he was loath to admit that she
could have any place in her affections for the scented devotee of
hyacinths.

Thus, as always, his musings brought him back to the same point. He
suppressed a groan and, standing up, began to pace the room. To and fro he
walked, before the gleaming cabinet, and presently his expression
underwent a subtle change. His pipe had long since gone out, but he had
failed to observe the fact. His eyes had grown unusually bright—and
suddenly he stepped to the table and stooping made a note upon the little
writing block.

He rang the bell communicating with the outer office. Innes came in.
“Innes,” he said, rapidly, “is there anything of really first-rate
importance with which I should deal personally?”

“Well,” replied the secretary, glancing at some papers which he carried,
“there is nothing that could not wait until to-morrow at a pinch.”

“The pinch has come,” said Harley. “I am going to interview the two most
important witnesses in the Abingdon case.”

“To whom do you refer, Mr. Harley?”

Innes stared rather blankly, as he made the inquiry, whereupon:

“I have no time to explain,” continued Harley. “But I have suddenly
realized the importance of a seemingly trivial incident which I witnessed.
It is these trivial incidents, Innes, which so often contain the hidden
clue.”

“What! you really think you have a clue at last?”

“I do.” The speaker’s face grew grimly serious. “Innes, if I am right, I
shall probably proceed to one of two places: the apartments of Ormuz Khan
or the chambers of Nicol Brinn. Listen. Remain here until I phone—whatever
the hour.”

“Shall I advise Wessex to stand by?”

Harley nodded. “Yes—do so. You understand, Innes, I am engaged and
not to be disturbed on any account?”

“I understand. You are going out by the private exit?”

“Exactly.”

As Innes retired, quietly closing the door, Harley took up the telephone
and called Sir Charles Abingdon’s number. He was answered by a voice which
he recognized.

“This is Paul Harley speaking,” he said. “Is that Benson?”

“Yes, sir,” answered the butler. “Good morning, sir.”

“Good morning, Benson. I have one or two questions to ask you, and there
is something I want you to do for me. Miss Abingdon is out, I presume?”

“Yes, sir,” replied Benson, sadly. “At the funeral, sir.”

“Is Mrs. Howett in?”

“She is, sir.”

“I shall be around in about a quarter of an hour, Benson. In the meantime,
will you be good enough to lay the dining table exactly as it was laid on
the night of Sir Charles’s death?”

Benson could be heard nervously clearing his throat, then: “Perhaps, sir,”
he said, diffidently, “I didn’t quite understand you. Lay the table, sir,
for dinner?”

“For dinner—exactly. I want everything to be there that was present
on the night of the tragedy; everything. Naturally you will have to place
different flowers in the vases, but I want to see the same vases. From the
soup tureen to the serviette rings, Benson, I wish you to duplicate the
dinner table as I remember it, paying particular attention to the exact
position of each article. Mrs. Howett will doubtless be able to assist you
in this.”

“Very good, sir,” said Benson—but his voice betokened bewilderment.
“I will see Mrs. Howett at once, sir.”

“Right. Good-bye.”

“Good-bye, sir.”

Replacing the receiver, Harley took a bunch of keys from his pocket and,
crossing the office, locked the door. He then retired to his private
apartments and also locked the communicating door. A few moments later he
came out of “The Chancery Agency” and proceeded in the direction of the
Strand. Under cover of the wire-gauze curtain which veiled the window he
had carefully inspected the scene before emerging. But although his eyes
were keen and his sixth sense whispered “Danger—danger!” he had
failed to detect anything amiss.

This constant conflict between intuition and tangible evidence was
beginning to tell upon him. Either his sixth sense had begun to play
tricks or he was the object of the most perfectly organized and efficient
system of surveillance with which he had ever come in contact. Once, in
the past, he had found himself pitted against the secret police of Moscow,
and hitherto he had counted their methods incomparable. Unless he was the
victim of an unpleasant hallucination, those Russian spies had their peers
in London.

As he alighted from a cab before the house of the late Sir Charles, Benson
opened the door. “We have just finished, sir,” he said, as Harley ran up
the steps. “But Mrs. Howett would like to see you, sir.”

“Very good, Benson,” replied Harley, handing his hat and cane to the
butler. “I will see her in the dining room, please.”

Benson throwing open the door, Paul Harley walked into the room which so
often figured in his vain imaginings. The table was laid for dinner in
accordance with his directions. The chair which he remembered to have
occupied was in place and that in which Sir Charles had died was set at
the head of the table.

Brows contracted, Harley stood just inside the room, looking slowly about
him. And, as he stood so, an interrogatory cough drew his gaze to the
doorway. He turned sharply, and there was Mrs. Howett, a pathetic little
figure in black.

“Ah, Mrs. Howett,” said Harley; kindly, “please try to forgive me for this
unpleasant farce with its painful memories. But I have a good reason. I
think you know this. Now, as I am naturally anxious to have everything
clear before Miss Abingdon returns, will you be good enough to tell me if
the table is at present set exactly as on the night that Sir Charles and I
came in to dinner?”

“No, Mr. Harley,” was the answer, “that was what I was anxious to explain.
The table is now laid as Benson left it on that dreadful night.”

“Ah, I see. Then you, personally, made some modifications?”

“I rearranged the flowers and moved the centre vase so.” The methodical
old lady illustrated her words. “I also had the dessert spoons changed.
You remember, Benson?”

Benson inclined his head. From a sideboard he took out two silver spoons
which he substituted for those already set upon the table.

“Anything else, Mrs. Howett?”

“The table is now as I left it, sir, a few minutes before your arrival.
Just after your arrival I found Jones, the parlourmaid—a most
incompetent, impudent girl—altering the position of the serviettes.
At least, such was my impression.”

“Of the serviettes?” murmured Harley.

“She denied it,” continued the housekeeper, speaking with great animation;
“but she could give no explanation. It was the last straw. She took too
many liberties altogether.”

As Harley remained silent, the old lady ran on animatedly, but Harley was
no longer listening.

“This is not the same table linen?” he asked, suddenly.

“Why, no, sir,” replied Benson. “Last week’s linen will be at the
laundry.”

“It has not gone yet,” interrupted Mrs. Howett. “I was making up the list
when you brought me Mr. Harley’s message.”

Paul Harley turned to her.

“May I ask you to bring the actual linen used at table on that occasion,
Mrs. Howett?” he said. “My request must appear singular, I know, but I
assure you it is no idle one.”

Benson looked positively stupid, but Mrs. Howett, who had conceived a sort
of reverence for Paul Harley, hurried away excitedly.

“Finally, Benson,” said Harley, “what else did you bring into the room
after Sir Charles and I had entered?”

“Soup, sir. Here is the tureen, on the sideboard, and all the soup plates
of the service in use that night. Of course, sir, I can’t say which were
the actual plates used.”

Paul Harley inspected the plates, a set of fine old Derby ware, and gazed
meditatively at the silver ladle. “Did the maid, Jones, handle any of
these?” he asked.

“No, sir”—emphatically. “She was preparing to bring the trout from
the kitchen.”

“But I saw her in the room.”

“She had brought in the fish plates, a sauce boat, and two toast racks,
sir. She put them here, on the sideboard. But they were never brought to
the table.”

“H’m. Has Jones left?”

“Yes, sir. She was under notice. But after her rudeness, Mrs. Howett
packed her off right away. She left the very next day after poor Sir
Charles died.”

“Where has she gone?”

“To a married sister, I believe, until she finds a new job. Mrs. Howett
has the address.”

At this moment Mrs. Howett entered, bearing a tablecloth and a number of
serviettes.

“This was the cloth,” she said, spreading it out, “but which of the
serviettes were used I cannot say.”

“Allow me to look,” replied Paul Harley.

One by one he began to inspect the serviettes, opening each in turn and
examining it critically.

“What have we here!” he exclaimed, presently. “Have blackberries been
served within the week, Mrs. Howett?”

“We never had them on the table, Mr. Harley. Sir Charles—God rest
him—said they irritated the stomach. Good gracious!” She turned to
Benson. “How is it I never noticed those stains, and what can have caused
them?”

The serviette which Paul Harley held outstretched was covered all over
with dark purple spots.

CHAPTER XII. THE VEIL IS RAISED

Rising from the writing table in the library, Paul Harley crossed to the
mantelpiece and stared long and hungrily at a photograph in a silver
frame. So closely did he concentrate upon it that he induced a sort of
auto-hypnosis, so that Phil Abingdon seemed to smile at him sadly. Then a
shadow appeared to obscure the piquant face. The soft outline changed,
subtly; the lips grew more full, became voluptuous; the eyes lengthened
and grew languorous. He found himself looking into the face of Ormuz Khan.

“Damn it!” he muttered, awakened from his trance.

He turned aside, conscious of a sudden, unaccountable chill. It might have
been caused by the mental picture which he had conjured up, or it might be
another of those mysterious warnings of which latterly he had had so many
without encountering any positive danger. He stood quite still, listening.

Afterward he sometimes recalled that moment, and often enough asked
himself what he had expected to hear. It was from this room, on an earlier
occasion, that he had heard the ominous movements in the apartment above.
To-day he heard nothing.

“Benson,” he called, opening the library door. As the man came along the
hall: “I have written a note to Mr. Innes, my secretary,” he explained.
“There it is, on the table. When the district messenger, for whom you
telephoned, arrives, give him the parcel and the note. He is to accept no
other receipt than that of Mr. Innes.”

“Very good, sir.”

Harley took his hat and cane, and Benson opened the front door.

“Good day, sir,” said the butler.

“Good day, Benson,” called Harley, hurrying out to the waiting cab.
“Number 236 South Lambeth Road,” he directed the man.

Off moved the taxi, and Harley lay back upon the cushions heaving a long
sigh. The irksome period of inaction was ended. The cloud which for a time
had dulled his usually keen wits was lifted. He was by no means sure that
enlightenment had come in time, but at least he was in hot pursuit of a
tangible clue, and he must hope that it would lead him, though tardily, to
the heart of this labyrinth which concealed—what?

Which concealed something, or someone, known and feared as Fire-Tongue.

For the moment he must focus upon establishing, beyond query or doubt, the
fact that Sir Charles Abingdon had not died from natural causes.
Premonitions, intuitions, beliefs resting upon a foundation of strange
dreams—these were helpful to himself, if properly employed, but they
were not legal evidence. This first point achieved, the motive of the
crime must be sought; and then—the criminal.

“One thing at a time,” Harley finally murmured.

Turning his head, he glanced back at the traffic in the street behind him.
The action was sheerly automatic. He had ceased to expect to detect the
presence of any pursuer. Yet he was convinced that his every movement was
closely watched. It was uncanny, unnerving, this consciousness of
invisible surveillance. Now, as he looked, he started. The invisible had
become the visible.

His cab was just on the point of turning on to the slope of Vauxhall
Bridge. And fifty yards behind, speeding along the Embankment, was a small
French car. The features of the driver he had no time to observe. But,
peering eagerly through the window, showed the dark face of the passenger.
The man’s nationality it was impossible to determine, but the keen, almost
savage interest, betrayed by the glittering black eyes, it was equally
impossible to mistake.

If the following car had turned on to the bridge, Harley, even yet, might
have entertained a certain doubt. But, mentally putting himself in the
pursuer’s place, he imagined himself detected and knew at once exactly
what he should do. Since this hypothetical course was actually pursued by
the other, Harley’s belief was confirmed.

Craning his neck, he saw the little French car turn abruptly and proceed
in the direction of Victoria Station. Instantly he acted.

Leaning out of the window he thrust a ten-shilling note into the cabman’s
hand. “Slow down, but don’t pull up,” he directed. “I am going to jump out
just as you pass that lorry ahead. Ten yards further on stop. Get down and
crank your engine, and then proceed slowly over the bridge. I shall not
want you again.”

“Right-oh, sir,” said the man, grinning broadly. As a result, immediately
he was afforded the necessary cover, Harley jumped from the cab. The man
reached back and closed the door, proceeding on his leisurely way.
Excepting the driver of the lorry, no one witnessed this eccentric
performance, and Harley, stepping on to the footpath, quietly joined the
stream of pedestrians and strolled slowly along.

He presently passed the stationary cab without giving any sign of
recognition to the dismounted driver. Then, a minute later, the cab
overtook him and was soon lost in the traffic ahead. Even as it
disappeared another cab went by rapidly.

Leaning forward in order to peer through the front window was the
dark-faced man whom he had detected on the Embankment!

“Quite correct,” murmured Harley, dryly. “Exactly what I should have
done.”

The spy, knowing himself discovered, had abandoned his own car in favour
of a passing taxicab, and in the latter had taken up the pursuit.

Paul Harley lighted a cigarette. Oddly enough, he was aware of a feeling
of great relief. In the first place, his sixth sense had been triumphantly
vindicated; and, in the second place, his hitherto shadowy enemies, with
their seemingly supernatural methods, had been unmasked. At least they
were human, almost incredibly clever, but of no more than ordinary flesh
and blood.

The contest had developed into open warfare. Harley’s accurate knowledge
of London had enabled him to locate No. 236 South Lambeth Road without
recourse to a guide, and now, walking on past the big gas works and the
railway station, he turned under the dark arches and pressed on to where a
row of unprepossessing dwellings extended in uniform ugliness from a
partly demolished building to a patch of waste ground.

That the house was being watched he did not doubt. In fact, he no longer
believed subterfuge to be of any avail. He was dealing with dangerously
accomplished criminals. How clever they were he had yet to learn; and it
was only his keen intuitive which at this juncture enabled him to score a
point over his cunning opponents.

He walked quite openly up the dilapidated steps to the door of No. 236,
and was about to seize the dirty iron knocker when the door opened
suddenly and a girl came out. She was dressed neatly and wore a pseudo
fashionable hat from which a heavy figured veil depended so as almost to
hide her features. She was carrying a bulging cane grip secured by a brown
leather strap.

Seeing Harley on the step, she paused for a moment, then, recovering
herself:

“Ellen!” she shouted down the dim passageway revealed by the opening of
the door. “Somebody to see you.”

Leaving the door open, she hurried past the visitor with averted face. It
was well done, and, thus disguised by the thick veil, another man than
Paul Harley might have failed to recognize one of whom he had never had
more than an imperfect glimpse. But if Paul Harley’s memory did not avail
him greatly, his unerring instinct never failed.

He grasped the girl’s arm. “One moment, Miss Jones,” he said, quietly, “it
is you I am here to see!”

The girl turned angrily, snatching her arm from his grasp. “You’ve made a
mistake, haven’t you?” she cried, furiously. “I don’t know you and I don’t
want to!”

“Be good enough to step inside again. Don’t make a scene. If you behave
yourself, you have nothing to fear. But I want to talk to you.”

He extended his arm to detain her. But she thrust it aside. “My boy’s
waiting round the corner!” she said, viciously. “Just see what he’ll do
when I tell him!”

“Step inside,” repeated Harley, quietly. “Or accompany me to Kennington
Lane Police Station—whichever you think would be the more amusing.”

“What d’you mean!” blustered the girl. “You can’t kid me. I haven’t done
anything.”

“Then do as I tell you. You have got to answer my questions—either
here or at the station. Which shall it be?”

He had realized the facts of the situation from the moment when the girl
had made her sudden appearance, and he knew that his only chance of
defeating his cunning opponents was to frighten her. Delicate measures
would be wasted upon such a character. But even as the girl, flinging
herself sullenly about, returned into the passage, he found himself
admiring the resourcefulness of his unknown enemies.

A tired-looking woman carrying a child appeared from somewhere and stared
apathetically at Harley.

Addressing the angry girl: “Another o’ your flames, Polly?” she inquired
in a dull voice. “Has he made you change your mind already?”

The girl addressed as “Polly” dropped her grip on the floor and, banging
open a door, entered a shabby little sitting room, followed by Harley.
Dropping onto a ragged couch, she stared obstinately out of the dirty
window.

“Excuse me, madam, for intruding,” said Harley to the woman with the baby,
“but Polly has some information of use to the police. Oh, don’t be
alarmed. She has committed no crime. I shall only detain her for a few
minutes.”

He bowed to the tired-looking woman and closed the sitting-room door.
“Now, young woman,” he said, sternly, adopting this official manner of his
friend, Inspector Wessex, “I am going to give you one warning, and one
only. Although I don’t think you know it, you have got mixed up with a
gang of crooks. Play the game with me, and I’ll stand by you. Try any
funny business and you’ll go to jail.”

The official manner had its effect. Miss Jones looked sharply across at
the speaker. “I haven’t done anything,” she said, sullenly.

Paul Harley advanced and stood over her. “What about the trick with the
serviettes at Sir Charles Abingdon’s?” he asked, speaking the words in
slow and deliberate fashion.

The shaft went home, but the girl possessed a stock of obstinate courage.
“What about it?” she inquired, but her voice had changed.

“Who made you do it?”

“What’s that to you?”

Paul Harley drew out his watch, glanced at the face, and returned the
timepiece to his pocket. “I have warned you,” he said. “In exactly three
minutes’ time I shall put you under arrest.”

The girl suddenly lifted her veil and, raising her face, looked up at him.
At last he had broken down her obstinate resistance. Already he had noted
the coarse, elemental formation of her hands, and now, the veil removed,
he saw that she belonged to a type of character often found in Wales and
closely duplicated in certain parts of London. There was a curious
flatness of feature and prominence of upper jaw singularly reminiscent of
the primitive Briton. Withal the girl was not unprepossessing in her
coarse way. Utter stupidity and dogged courage are the outstanding
characteristics of this type. But fear of the law is strong within them.

“Don’t arrest me,” she said. “I’ll tell you.”

“Good. In the first place, then, where were you going when I came here?”

“To meet my boy at Vauxhall Station.”

“What is his name?”

“I’m not going to tell you. What’s he done?”

“He has done murder. What is his name?”

“My God!” whispered the girl, and her face blanched swiftly. “Murder! I—I
can’t tell you his name—”

“You mean you won’t?”

She did not answer.

“He is a very dark man,” continued Harley “with black eyes. He is a
Hindu.”

The girl stared straight before her, dumbly.

“Answer me!” shouted Harley.

“Yes—yes! He is a foreigner.”

“A Hindu?”

“I think so.”

“He was here five minutes ago?”

“Yes.”

“Where was he going to take you?”

“I don’t know. He said he could put me in a good job out of London. We had
only ten minutes to catch the train. He’s gone to get the tickets.”

“Where did you meet him?”

“In the Green Park.”

“When?”

“About a month ago.”

“Was he going to marry you?”

“Yes.”

“What did you do to the serviettes on the night Sir Charles died?”

“Oh, my God! I didn’t do anything to hurt him—I didn’t do anything
to hurt him!”

“Answer me.”

“Sidney—”

“Oh, he called himself Sidney, did he? It isn’t his name. But go on.”

“He asked me to get one of the serviettes, with the ring, and to lend it
to him.”

“You did this?”

“Yes. But he brought it back.”

“When?”

“The afternoon—”

“Before Sir Charles’s death? Yes. Go on. What did he tell you to do with
this serviette?”

“It—was in a box. He said I was not to open the box until I put the
serviette on the table, and that it had to be put by Sir Charles’s plate.
It had to be put there just before the meal began.”

“What else?”

“I had to burn the box.”

“Well?”

“That night I couldn’t see how it was to be done. Benson had laid the
dinner table and Mrs. Howett was pottering about. Then, when I thought I
had my chance, Sir Charles sat down in the dining room and began to read.
He was still there and I had the box hidden in the hall stand, all ready,
when Sidney—rang up.”

“Rang you up?”

“Yes. We had arranged it. He said he was my brother. I had to tell him I
couldn’t do it.”

“Yes!”

“He said: ‘You must.’ I told him Sir Charles was in the dining room, and
he said: ‘I’ll get him away. Directly he goes, don’t fail to do what I
told you.’”

“And then?”

“Another ‘phone call came—for Sir Charles. I knew who it was,
because I had told Sidney about the case Sir Charles was attending in the
square. When Sir Charles went out I changed the serviettes. Mrs. Howett
found me in the dining room and played hell. But afterward I managed to
burn the box in the kitchen. That’s all I know. What harm was there?”

“Harm enough!” said Harley, grimly. “And now—what was it that
‘Sidney’ stole from Sir Charles’s bureau in the study?”

The girl started and bit her lip convulsively. “It wasn’t stealing,” she
muttered. “It wasn’t worth anything.”

“Answer me. What did he take?”

“He took nothing.”

“For the last time: answer.”

“It wasn’t Sidney who took it. I took it.”

“You took what?”

“A paper.”

“You mean that you stole Sir Charles’s keys and opened his bureau?”

“There was no stealing. He was out and they were lying on his dressing
table. Sidney had told me to do it the first time I got a chance.”

“What had he told you to do?”

“To search through Sir Charles’s papers and see if there was anything with
the word ‘Fire-Tongue’ in it!”

“Ah!” exclaimed Harley, a note of suppressed triumph in his voice. “Go
on.”

“There was only one paper about it,” continued the girl, now speaking
rapidly, “or only one that I could find. I put the bureau straight again
and took this paper to Sidney.”

“But you must have read the paper?”

“Only a bit of it. When I came to the word ‘Fire-Tongue,’ I didn’t read
any more.”

“What was it about—the part you did read?”

“The beginning was all about India. I couldn’t understand it. I jumped a
whole lot. I hadn’t much time and I was afraid Mrs. Howett would find me.
Then, further on, I came to ‘Fire-Tongue’.”

“But what did it say about ‘Fire-Tongue’?”

“I couldn’t make it out, sir. Oh, indeed I’m telling you the truth! It
seemed to me that Fire-Tongue was some sort of mark.”

“Mark?”

“Yes—a mark Sir Charles had seen in India, and then again in London—”

“In London! Where in London?”

“On someone’s arm.”

“What! Tell me the name of this person!”

“I can’t remember, sir! Oh, truly I can’t.”

“Was the name mentioned?”

“Yes.”

“Was it Armand?”

“No.”

“Ormond?”

“No.”

“Anything like Ormond?”

The girl shook her head.

“It was not Ormuz Khan?”

“No. I am sure it wasn’t.”

Paul Harley’s expression underwent a sudden change. “Was it Brown?” he
asked.

She hesitated. “I believe it did begin with a B,” she admitted.

“Was it Brunn?”

“No! I remember, sir. It was Brinn!”

“Good God!” muttered Harley. “Are you sure?”

“Quite sure.”

“Do you know any one of that name?”

“No, sir.”

“And is this positively all you remember?”

“On my oath, it is.”

“How often have you seen Sidney since your dismissal?”

“I saw him on the morning I left.”

“And then not again until to-day?”

“No.”

“Does he live in London?”

“No. He is a valet to a gentleman who lives in the country.”

“How do you know?”

“He told me.”

“What is the name of the place?”

“I don’t know.”

“Once again—what is the name of the place?”

The girl bit her lip.

“Answer!” shouted Harley.

“I swear, sir,” cried the girl, beginning suddenly to sob, “that I don’t
know! Oh, please let me go! I swear I have told you all I know!”

“Good!”

Paul Harley glanced at his watch, crossed the room, and opened the door.
He turned. “You can go now,” he said. “But I don’t think you will find
Sidney waiting!”

It wanted only three minutes to midnight, and Innes, rather haggard and
anxious-eyed, was pacing Paul Harley’s private office when the ‘phone bell
rang. Eagerly he took up the receiver.

“Hullo!” came a voice. “That you, Innes?”

“Mr. Harley!” cried Innes. “Thank God you are safe! I was growing
desperately anxious!”

“I am by no means safe, Innes! I am in one of the tightest corners of my
life! Listen: Get Wessex! If he’s off duty, get Burton. Tell him to bring—”

The voice ceased.

“Hullo!—Mr. Harley!” called Innes. “Mr. Harley!”

A faint cry answered him. He distinctly heard the sound of a fall. Then
the other receiver was replaced on the hook.

“Merciful Heavens!” whispered Innes. “What has happened? Where was he
speaking from? What can I do?”

CHAPTER XIII. NICOL BRINN HAS A VISITOR

It was close upon noon, but Nicol Brinn had not yet left his chambers.
From that large window which overlooked Piccadilly he surveyed the
prospect with dull, lack-lustre eyes. His morning attire was at least as
tightly fitting as that which he favoured in the evening, and now, hands
clasped behind his back and an unlighted cigar held firmly in the left
corner of his mouth, he gazed across the park with a dreamy and vacant
regard. One very familiar with this strange and taciturn man might have
observed that his sallow features looked even more gaunt than usual. But
for any trace of emotion in that stoic face the most expert physiognomist
must have sought in vain.

Behind the motionless figure the Alaskan ermine and Manchurian leopards
stared glassily across the room. The flying lemur continued apparently to
contemplate the idea of swooping upon the head of the tigress where she
crouched upon her near-by pedestal. The death masks grinned; the Egyptian
priestess smiled. And Nicol Brinn, expressionless, watched the traffic in
Piccadilly.

There came a knock at the door.

“In,” said Nicol Brinn.

Hoskins, his manservant, entered: “Detective Inspector Wessex would like
to see you, sir.”

Nicol Brinn did not turn around. “In,” he repeated.

Silently Hoskins retired, and, following a short interval, ushered into
the room a typical detective officer, a Scotland Yard man of the best
type. For Detective Inspector Wessex no less an authority than Paul Harley
had predicted a brilliant future, and since he had attained to his present
rank while still a comparatively young man, the prophecy of the celebrated
private investigator was likely to be realized. Nicol Brinn turned and
bowed in the direction of a large armchair.

“Pray sit down, Inspector,” he said.

The high, monotonous voice expressed neither surprise nor welcome, nor any
other sentiment whatever.

Detective Inspector Wessex returned the bow, placed his bowler hat upon
the carpet, and sat down in the armchair. Nicol Brinn seated himself upon
a settee over which was draped a very fine piece of Persian tapestry, and
stared at his visitor with eyes which expressed nothing but a sort of
philosophic stupidity, but which, as a matter of fact, photographed the
personality of the man indelibly upon that keen brain.

Detective Inspector Wessex cleared his throat and did not appear to be
quite at ease.

“What is it?” inquired Nicol Brinn, and proceeded to light his cigar.

“Well, sir,” said the detective, frankly, “it’s a mighty awkward business,
and I don’t know just how to approach it.”

“Shortest way,” drawled Nicol Brinn. “Don’t study me.”

“Thanks,” said Wessex, “I’ll do my best. It’s like this”—he stared
frankly at the impassive face: “Where is Mr. Paul Harley?”

Nicol Brinn gazed at the lighted end of his cigar meditatively for a
moment and then replaced it in the right and not in the left corner of his
mouth. Even to the trained eye of the detective inspector he seemed to be
quite unmoved, but one who knew him well would have recognized that this
simple action betokened suppressed excitement.

“He left these chambers at ten-fifteen on Wednesday night,” replied the
American. “I had never seen him before and I have never seen him since.”

“Sure?”

“Quite.”

“Could you swear to it before a jury?”

“You seem to doubt my word.”

Detective Inspector Wessex stood up. “Mr. Brinn,” he said, “I am in an
awkward corner. I know you for a man with a fine sporting reputation, and
therefore I don’t doubt your word. But Mr. Paul Harley disappeared last
night.”

At last Nicol Brinn was moved. A second time he took the cigar from his
mouth, gazed at the end reflectively, and then hurled the cigar across the
room into the hearth. He stood up, walked to a window, and stared out.
“Just sit quiet a minute,” came the toneless voice. “You’ve hit me harder
than you know. I want to think it out.”

At the back of the tall, slim figure Detective Inspector Wessex stared
with a sort of wonder. Mr. Nicol Brinn of Cincinnati was a conundrum which
he found himself unable to catalogue, although in his gallery of queer
characters were many eccentric and peculiar. If Nicol Brinn should prove
to be crooked, then automatically he became insane. This Wessex had
reasoned out even before he had set eyes upon the celebrated American
traveller. His very first glimpse of Nicol Brinn had confirmed his
reasoning, except that the cool, calm strength of the man had done much to
upset the theory of lunacy.

Followed an interval of unbroken silence. Not even the ticking of a clock
could be heard in that long, singularly furnished apartment. Then, as the
detective continued to gaze upon the back of Mr. Nicol Brinn, suddenly the
latter turned.

“Detective Inspector Wessex,” he said, “there has been a cloud hanging
over my head for seven years. That cloud is going to burst very soon, and
it looks as if it were going to do damage.”

“I don’t understand you, sir,” replied the detective, bluntly. “But I have
been put in charge of the most extraordinary case that has ever come my
way and I’ll ask you to make yourself as clear as possible.”

“I’ll do all I can,” Nicol Brinn assured him. “But first tell me
something: Why have you come to me for information in respect to Mr. Paul
Harley?”

“I’ll answer your question,” said Wessex, and the fact did not escape the
keen observing power of Nicol Brinn that the detective’s manner had grown
guarded. “He informed Mr. Innes, his secretary, before setting out, that
he was coming here to your chambers.”

Nicol Brinn stared blankly at the speaker. “He told him that? When?”

“Yesterday.”

“That he was coming here?”

“He did.”

Nicol Brinn sat down again upon the settee. “Detective Inspector,” said
he, “I give you my word of honour as a gentleman that I last saw Mr. Paul
Harley at ten-fifteen on Wednesday night. Since then, not only have I not
seen him, but I have received no communication from him.”

The keen glance of the detective met and challenged the dull glance of the
speaker. “I accept your word, sir,” said Wessex, finally, and he sighed
and scratched his chin in the manner of a man hopelessly puzzled.

Silence fell again. The muted sounds of Piccadilly became audible in the
stillness. Cabs and cars rolled by below, their occupants all unaware of
the fact that in that long, museum-like room above their heads lay the key
to a tragedy and the clue to a mystery.

“Look here, sir,” said the detective, suddenly, “the result of Mr. Paul
Harley’s investigations right up to date has been placed in my hands,
together with all his notes. I wonder if you realize the fact that,
supposing Mr. Harley does not return, I am in repossession of sufficient
evidence to justify me in putting you under arrest?”

“I see your point quite clearly,” replied Nicol Brinn. “I have seen my
danger since the evening that Mr. Paul Harley walked into this room: but
I’ll confess I did not anticipate this particular development.”

“To get right down to business,” said Wessex, “if Mr. Paul Harley did not
come here, where, in your idea, did he go?”

Nicol Brinn considered the speaker meditatively. “If I knew that,” said
he, “maybe I could help. I told him here in this very room that the pair
of us were walking on the edge of hell. I don’t like to say it, and you
don’t know all it means, but in my opinion he has taken a step too far.”

Detective Inspector Wessex stood up impatiently. “You have already talked
in that strain to Mr. Harley,” he said, a bit brusquely. “Mr. Innes has
reported something of the conversation to me. But I must ask you to
remember that, whereas Mr. Paul Harley is an unofficial investigator, I am
an officer of the Criminal Investigation Department, and figures of speech
are of no use to me. I want facts. I want plain speaking. I ask you for
help and you answer in parables. Now perhaps I am saying too much, and
perhaps I am not, but that Mr. Harley was right in what he believed, the
circumstances of his present disappearance go to prove. He learned too
much about something called Fire-Tongue.”

Wessex spoke the word challengingly, staring straight into the eyes of
Nicol Brinn, but the latter gave no sign, and Wessex, concealing his
disappointment, continued: “You know more about Fire-Tongue than you ever
told Mr. Paul Harley. All you know I have got to know. Mr. Harley has been
kidnapped, perhaps done to death.”

“Why do you say so?” asked Nicol Brinn, rapidly.

“Because I know it is so. It does not matter how I know.”

“You are certain that his absence is not voluntary?”

“We have definite evidence to that effect.”

“I don’t expect you to be frank with me, Detective Inspector, but I’ll be
as frank with you as I can be. I haven’t the slightest idea in the world
where Mr. Harley is. But I have information which, if I knew where he was,
would quite possibly enable me to rescue him.”

“Provided he is alive!” added Wessex, angrily.

“What leads you to suppose that he is not?”

“If he is alive, he is a prisoner.”

“Good God!” said Nicol Brinn in a low voice. “It has come.” He took a step
toward the detective. “Mr. Wessex,” he continued, “I don’t tell you to do
whatever your duty indicates; I know you will do it. But in the interests
of everybody concerned I have a request to make. Have me watched if you
like—I suppose that’s automatic. But whatever happens, and wherever
your suspicions point, give me twenty-four hours. As I think you can see,
I am a man who thinks slowly, but moves with a rush. You can believe me or
not, but I am even more anxious than you are to see this thing through.
You think I know what lies back of it all, and I don’t say that you are
not right. But one thing you don’t know, and that thing I can’t tell you.
In twenty-four hours I might be able to tell you. Whatever happens, even
if poor Harley is found dead, don’t hamper my movements between now and
this time tomorrow.”

Wessex, who had been watching the speaker intently, suddenly held out his
hand. “It’s a bet!” he said. “It’s my case, and I’ll conduct it in my own
way.”

“Mr. Wessex,” replied Nicol Brinn, taking the extended hand, “I think you
are a clever man. There are questions you would like to ask me, and there
are questions I would like to ask you. But we both realize the facts of
the situation, and we are both silent. One thing I’ll say: You are in the
deadliest peril you have ever known. Be careful. Believe me I mean it. Be
very careful.”

CHAPTER XIV. WESSEX GETS BUSY

Innes rose from the chair usually occupied by Paul Harley as Detective
Inspector Wessex, with a very blank face, walked into the office. Innes
looked haggard and exhibited unmistakable signs of anxiety. Since he had
received that dramatic telephone message from his chief he had not spared
himself for a moment. The official machinery of Scotland Yard was at work
endeavouring to trace the missing man, but since it had proved impossible
to find out from where the message had been sent, the investigation was
handicapped at the very outset. Close inquiries at the Savoy Hotel had
shown that Harley had not been there. Wessex, who was a thorough artist
within his limitations, had satisfied himself that none of the callers who
had asked for Ormuz Khan, and no one who had loitered about the lobbies,
could possibly have been even a disguised Paul Harley.

To Inspector Wessex the lines along which Paul Harley was operating
remained a matter of profound amazement and mystification. His interview
with Mr. Nicol Brinn had only served to baffle him more hopelessly than
ever. The nature of Paul Harley’s inquiries—inquiries which,
presumably from the death of Sir Charles Abingdon, had led him to
investigate the movements of two persons of international repute, neither
apparently having even the most remote connection with anything crooked—was
a conundrum for the answer to which the detective inspector sought in
vain.

“I can see you have no news,” said Innes, dully.

“To be perfectly honest,” replied Wessex, “I feel like a man who is
walking in his sleep. Except for the extraordinary words uttered by the
late Sir Charles Abingdon, I fail to see that there is any possible
connection between his death and Mr. Nicol Brinn. I simply can’t fathom
what Mr. Harley was working upon. To my mind there is not the slightest
evidence of foul play in the case. There is no motive; apart from which,
there is absolutely no link.”

“Nevertheless,” replied Innes, slowly, “you know the chief, and therefore
you know as well as I do that he would not have instructed me to
communicate with you unless he had definite evidence in his possession. It
is perfectly clear that he was interrupted in the act of telephoning. He
was literally dragged away from the instrument.”

“I agree,” said Wessex. “He had got into a tight corner somewhere right
enough. But where does Nicol Brinn come in?”

“How did he receive your communication?”

“Oh, it took him fairly between the eyes. There is no denying that. He
knows something.”

“What he knows,” said Innes, slowly, “is what Mr. Harley learned last
night, and what he fears is what has actually befallen the chief.”

Detective Inspector Wessex stood beside the Burmese cabinet, restlessly
drumming his fingers upon its lacquered surface. “I am grateful for one
thing,” he said. “The press has not got hold of this story.”

“They need never get hold of it if you are moderately careful.”

“For several reasons I am going to be more than moderately careful.
Whatever Fire-Tongue may be, its other name is sudden death! It’s a devil
of a business; a perfect nightmare. But—” he paused—

“I am wondering what on earth induced Mr. Harley to send that parcel of
linen to the analyst.”

“The result of the analysis may prove that the chief was not engaged upon
any wild-goose chase.”

“By heavens!” Wessex sprang up, his eyes brightened, and he reached for
his hat, “that gives me an idea!”

“The message with the parcel was written upon paper bearing the letterhead
of the late Sir Charles Abingdon. So Mr. Harley evidently made his first
call there! I’m off, sir! The trail starts from that house!”

Leaving Innes seated at the big table with an expression of despair upon
his face, Detective Inspector Wessex set out. He blamed himself for
wasting time upon the obvious, for concentrating too closely upon the clue
given by Harley’s last words to Innes before leaving the office in
Chancery Lane. It was poor workmanship. He had hoped to take a short cut,
and it had proved, as usual, to be a long one. Now, as he sat in a laggard
cab feeling that every minute wasted might be a matter of life and death,
he suddenly became conscious of personal anxiety. He was a courageous,
indeed a fearless, man, and he was subconsciously surprised to find
himself repeating the words of Nicol Brinn: “Be careful—be very
careful!” With all the ardour of the professional, he longed to find a
clue which should lead him to the heart of the mystery.

Innes had frankly outlined the whole of Paul Harley’s case to date, and
Detective Inspector Wessex, although he had not admitted the fact, had
nevertheless recognized that from start to finish the thing did not offer
one single line of inquiry which he would have been capable of following
up. That Paul Harley had found material to work upon, had somehow picked
up a definite clue from this cloudy maze, earned the envious admiration of
the Scotland Yard man.

Arrived at his destination, he asked to see Miss Abingdon, and was shown
by the butler into a charmingly furnished little sitting room which was
deeply impressed with the personality of its dainty owner. It was
essentially and delightfully feminine. Yet in the decorations and in the
arrangement of the furniture there was a note of independence which was
almost a note of defiance. Phyllis Abingdon, an appealingly pathetic
figure in her black dress, rose to greet the inspector.

“Don’t be alarmed, Miss Abingdon,” he said, kindly. “My visit does not
concern you personally in any way, but I thought perhaps you might be able
to help me trace Mr. Paul Harley.”

Wessex had thus expressed himself with the best intentions, but even
before the words were fully spoken he realized with a sort of shock that
he could not well have made a worse opening. Phil Abingdon’s eyes seemed
to grow alarmingly large. She stood quite still, twisting his card between
her supple fingers.

“Mr. Harley!” she whispered.

“I did not want to alarm you,” said the detective, guiltily, “but—”
He stopped, at a loss for words.

“Has something happened to him?”

“I am sorry if I have alarmed you,” he assured her, “but there is some
doubt respecting Mr. Harley’s present whereabouts. Have you any idea where
he went when he left this house yesterday?”

“Yes, yes. I know where he went, quite well.”

“Benson, the butler, told me all about it when I came in.” Phil Abingdon
spoke excitedly, and took a step nearer Wessex. “He went to call upon
Jones, our late parlourmaid.”

“Late parlourmaid?” echoed Wessex, uncomprehendingly.

“Yes. He seemed to think he had made a discovery of importance.”

“Something to do with a parcel which he sent away from here to the
analyst?”

“Yes! I have been wondering whatever it could be. In fact, I rang up his
office this morning, but learned that he was out. It was a serviette which
he took away. Did you know that?”

“I did know it, Miss Abingdon. I called upon the analyst. I understand you
were out when Mr. Harley came. May I ask who interviewed him?”

“He saw Benson and Mrs. Howett, the housekeeper.”

“May I also see them?”

“Yes, with pleasure. But please tell me”—Phil Abingdon looked up at
him pleadingly—“do you think something—something dreadful has
happened to Mr. Harley?”

“Don’t alarm yourself unduly,” said Wessex. “I hope before the day is over
to be in touch with him.”

As a matter of fact, he had no such hope. It was a lie intended to console
the girl, to whom the news of Harley’s disappearance seemed to have come
as a terrible blow. More and more Wessex found himself to be groping in
the dark. And when, in response to the ringing of the bell, Benson came in
and repeated what had taken place on the previous day, the detective’s
state of mystification grew even more profound. As a matter of routine
rather than with any hope of learning anything useful, he interviewed Mrs.
Howett; but the statement of the voluble old lady gave no clue which
Wessex could perceive to possess the slightest value.

Both witnesses having been dismissed, he turned again to Phil Abingdon,
who had been sitting watching him with a pathetic light of hope in her
eyes throughout his examination of the butler and Mrs. Howett.

“The next step is clear enough,” he said, brightly. “I am off to South
Lambeth Road. The woman Jones is the link we are looking for.”

“But the link with what, Mr. Wessex?” asked Phil Abingdon. “What is it all
about?—what does it all mean?”

“The link with Mr. Paul Harley,” replied Wessex. He moved toward the door.

“But won’t you tell me something more before you go?” said the girl,
beseechingly. “I—I—feel responsible if anything has happened
to Mr. Harley. Please be frank with me. Are you afraid he is—in
danger?”

“Well, miss,” replied the detective, haltingly, “he rang up his secretary,
Mr. Innes, last night—we don’t know where from—and admitted
that he was in a rather tight corner. I don’t believe for a moment that he
is in actual danger, but he probably has—” again he hesitated—“good
reasons of his own for remaining absent at present.”

Phil Abingdon looked at him doubtingly. “I am almost afraid to ask you,”
she said in a low voice, “but—if you hear anything, will you ring me
up?”

“I promise to do so.”

Chartering a more promising-looking cab than that in which he had come,
Detective Inspector Wessex proceeded to 236 South Lambeth Road. He had
knocked several times before the door was opened by the woman to whom the
girl Jones had called on the occasion of Harley’s visit.

“I am a police officer,” said the detective inspector, “and I have called
to see a woman named Jones, formerly in the employ of Sir Charles
Abingdon.”

“Polly’s gone,” was the toneless reply.

“Gone? Gone where?”

“She went away last night to a job in the country.”

“What time last night?”

“I can’t remember the time. Just after a gentleman had called here to see
her.”

“Someone from the police?”

“I don’t know. She seemed to be very frightened.”

“Were you present when he interviewed her?”

“No.”

“After he had gone, what did Polly do?”

“Sat and cried for about half an hour, then Sidney came for her.”

“Sidney?”

“Her boy—the latest one.”

“Describe Sidney.”

“A dark fellow, foreign.”

“French—German?”

“No. A sort of Indian, like.”

“Indian?” snapped Wessex. “What do you mean by Indian?”

“Very dark,” replied the woman without emotion, swinging a baby she held
to and fro in a methodical way which the detective found highly
irritating.

“You mean a native of India?”

“Yes, I should think so. I never noticed him much. Polly has so many.”

“How long has she known this man?”

“Only a month or so, but she is crazy about him.”

“And when he came last night she went away with him?”

“Yes. She was all ready to go before the other gentleman called. He must
have told her something which made her think it was all off, and she was
crazy with joy when Sidney turned up. She had all her things packed, and
off she went.”

Experience had taught Detective Inspector Wessex to recognize the truth
when he met it, and he did not doubt the statement of the woman with the
baby. “Can you give me any idea where this man Sidney came from?” he
asked.

“I am afraid I can’t,” replied the listless voice. “He was in the service
of some gentleman in the country; that’s all I know about him.”

“Did Polly leave no address to which letters were to be forwarded?”

“No; she said she would write.”

“One other point,” said Wessex, and he looked hard into the woman’s face:
“What do you know about Fire-Tongue?”

He was answered by a stare of blank stupidity.

“You heard me?”

“Yes, I heard you, but I don’t know what you are talking about.”

Quick decisions are required from every member of the Criminal
Investigation Department, and Detective Inspector Wessex came to one now.

“That will do for the present,” he said, turned, and ran down the steps to
the waiting cab.

CHAPTER XV. NAIDA

Dusk was falling that evening. Gaily lighted cars offering glimpses of
women in elaborate toilets and of their black-coated and white-shirted
cavaliers thronged Piccadilly, bound for theatre or restaurant. The
workaday shutters were pulled down, and the night life of London had
commenced. The West End was in possession of an army of pleasure seekers,
but Nicol Brinn was not among their ranks. Wearing his tightly-buttoned
dinner jacket, he stood, hands clasped behind him, staring out of the
window as Detective Inspector Wessex had found him at noon. Only one who
knew him very well could have detected the fact that anxiety was written
upon that Sioux-like face. His gaze seemed to be directed, not so much
upon the fading prospect of the park, as downward, upon the moving
multitude in the street below. Came a subdued knocking at the door.

“In,” said Nicol Brinn.

Hoskins, the neat manservant, entered. “A lady to see you, sir.”

Nicol Brinn turned in a flash. For one fleeting instant the dynamic force
beneath the placid surface exhibited itself in every line of his gaunt
face. He was transfigured; he was a man of monstrous energy, of tremendous
enthusiasm. Then the enthusiasm vanished. He was a creature of stone
again; the familiar and taciturn Nicol Brinn, known and puzzled over in
the club lands of the world.

“Name?”

“She gave none.”

“English?”

“No, sir, a foreign lady.”

“In.”

Hoskins having retired, and having silently closed the door, Nicol Brinn
did an extraordinary thing, a thing which none of his friends in London,
Paris, or New York would ever have supposed him capable of doing. He
raised his clenched hands. “Please God she has come,” he whispered. “Dare
I believe it? Dare I believe it?”

The door was opened again, and Hoskins, standing just inside, announced:
“The lady to see you, sir.”

He stepped aside and bowed as a tall, slender woman entered the room. She
wore a long wrap trimmed with fur, the collar turned up about her face.
Three steps forward she took and stopped. Hoskins withdrew and closed the
door.

At that, while Nicol Brinn watched her with completely transfigured
features, the woman allowed the cloak to slip from her shoulders, and,
raising her head, extended both her hands, uttering a subdued cry of
greeting that was almost a sob. She was dark, with the darkness of the
East, but beautiful with a beauty that was tragic. Her eyes were glorious
wells of sadness, seeming to mirror a soul that had known a hundred ages.
Withal she had the figure of a girl, slender and supple, possessing the
poetic grace and poetry of movement born only in the Orient.

“Naida!” breathed Nicol Brinn, huskily. “Naida!”

His high voice had softened, had grown tremulous. He extended his hands
with a groping movement The woman laughed shudderingly.

Her cloak lying forgotten upon the carpet, she advanced toward him.

She wore a robe that was distinctly Oriental without being in the
slightest degree barbaric. Her skin was strangely fair, and jewels
sparkled upon her fingers. She conjured up dreams of the perfumed luxury
of the East, and was a figure to fire the imagination. But Nicol Brinn
seemed incapable of movement; his body was inert, but his eyes were on
fire. Into the woman’s face had come anxiety that was purely feminine.

“Oh, my big American sweetheart,” she whispered, and, approaching him with
a sort of timidity, laid her little hands upon his arm. “Do you still
think I am beautiful?”

“Beautiful!”

No man could have recognized the voice of Nicol Brinn. Suddenly his arms
were about her like bands of iron, and with a long, wondering sigh she lay
back looking up into his face, while he gazed hungrily into her eyes. His
lips had almost met hers when softly, almost inaudibly, she sighed:
“Nicol!”

She pronounced the name queerly, giving to i the value of ee, and almost
dropping the last letter entirely.

Their lips met, and for a moment they clung together, this woman of the
East and man of the West, in utter transgression of that law which
England’s poet has laid down. It was a reunion speaking of a love so deep
as to be sacred.

Lifting the woman in his arms lightly as a baby, he carried her to the
settee between the two high windows and placed her there amid Oriental
cushions, where she looked like an Eastern queen. He knelt at her feet
and, holding both her hands, looked into her face with that wondering
expression in which there was something incredulous and something
sorrowful; a look of great and selfless tenderness. The face of Naida was
lighted up, and her big eyes filled with tears. Disengaging one of her
jewelled hands, she ruffled Nicol Brinn’s hair.

“My Nicol,” she said, tenderly. “Have I changed so much?”

Her accent was quaint and fascinating, but her voice was very musical. To
the man who knelt at her feet it was the sweetest music in the world.

“Naida,” he whispered. “Naida. Even yet I dare not believe that you are
here.”

“You knew I would come?”

“How was I to know that you would see my message?”

She opened her closed left hand and smoothed out a scrap of torn paper
which she held there. It was from the “Agony” column of that day’s Times.

N. November 23, 1913. N. B. See Telephone Directory.

“I told you long, long ago that I would come if ever you wanted me.”

“Long, long ago,” echoed Nicol Brinn. “To me it has seemed a century;
to-night it seems a day.”

He watched her with a deep and tireless content. Presently her eyes fell.
“Sit here beside me,” she said. “I have not long to be here. Put your arms
round me. I have something to tell you.”

He seated himself beside her on the settee, and held her close. “My
Naida!” he breathed softly.

“Ah, no, no!” she entreated. “Do you want to break my heart?”

He suddenly released her, clenched his big hands, and stared down at the
carpet. “You have broken mine.”

Impulsively Naida threw her arms around his neck, coiling herself up
lithely and characteristically beside him.

“My big sweetheart,” she whispered, crooningly. “Don’t say it—don’t
say it.”

“I have said it. It is true.”

Turning, fiercely he seized her. “I won’t let you go!” he cried, and there
was a strange light in his eyes. “Before I was helpless, now I am not.
This time you have come to me, and you shall stay.”

She shrank away from him terrified, wild-eyed. “Oh, you forget, you
forget!”

“For seven years I have tried to forget. I have been mad, but to-night I
am sane.”

“I trusted you, I trusted you!” she moaned.

Nicol Brinn clenched his teeth grimly for a moment, and then, holding her
averted face very close to his own, he began to speak in a low, monotonous
voice. “For seven years,” he said, “I have tried to die, because without
you I did not care to live. I have gone into the bad lands of the world
and into the worst spots of those bad lands. Night and day your eyes have
watched me, and I have wakened from dreams of your kisses and gone out to
court murder. I have earned the reputation of being something more than
human, but I am not. I had everything that life could give me except you.
Now I have got you, and I am going to keep you.”

Naida began to weep silently. The low, even voice of Nicol Brinn ceased.
He could feel her quivering in his grasp; and, as she sobbed, slowly,
slowly the fierce light faded from his eyes.

“Naida, my Naida, forgive me,” he whispered.

She raised her face, looking up to him pathetically. “I came to you, I
came to you,” she moaned. “I promised long ago that I would come. What use
is it, all this? You know, you know! Kill me if you like. How often have I
asked you to kill me. It would be sweet to die in your arms. But what use
to talk so? You are in great danger or you would not have asked me to
come. If you don’t know it, I tell you—you are in great danger.”

Nicol Brinn released her, stood up, and began slowly to pace about the
room. He deliberately averted his gaze from the settee. “Something has
happened,” he began, “which has changed everything. Because you are here I
know that—someone else is here.”

He was answered by a shuddering sigh, but he did not glance in the
direction of the settee.

“In India I respected what you told me. Because you were strong, I loved
you the more. Here in England I can no longer respect the accomplice of
assassins.”

“Assassins? What, is this something new?”

“With a man’s religion, however bloodthirsty it may be, I don’t quarrel so
long as he sincerely believes in it. But for private assassination I have
no time and no sympathy.” It was the old Nicol Brinn who was speaking,
coldly and incisively. “That—something we both know about ever moved
away from those Indian hills was a possibility I had never considered.
When it was suddenly brought home to me that you, you, might be here in
London, I almost went mad. But the thing that made me realize it was a
horrible thing, a black, dastardly thing. See here.”

He turned and crossed to where the woman was crouching, watching him with
wide-open, fearful eyes. He took both her hands and looked grimly into her
face. “For seven years I have walked around with a silent tongue and a
broken heart. All that is finished. I am going to speak.”

“Ah, no, no!” She was on her feet, her face a mask of tragedy. “You swore
to me, you swore to me!”

“No oath holds good in the face of murder.”

“Is that why you bring me here? Is that what your message means?”

“My message means that because of—the thing you know about—I
am suspected of the murder.”

“You? You?”

“Yes, I, I! Good God! when I realize what your presence here means, I wish
more than ever that I had succeeded in finding death.”

“Please don’t say it,” came a soft, pleading voice. “What can I do? What
do you want me to do?”

“I want you to release me from that vow made seven years ago.”

Naida uttered a stifled cry. “How is it possible? You understand that it
is not possible.”

Nicol Brinn seized her by the shoulders. “Is it possible for me to remain
silent while men are murdered here in a civilized country?”

“Oh,” moaned Naida, “what can I do, what can I do?”

“Give me permission to speak and stay here. Leave the rest to me.”

“You know I cannot stay, my Nicol,” she replied, sadly.

“But,” he said with deliberate slowness, “I won’t let you go.”

“You must let me go. Already I have been here too long.”

He threw his arms around her and crushed her against him fiercely. “Never
again,” he said. “Never again.”

She pressed her little hands against his shoulders.

“Listen! Oh, listen!”

“I shall listen to nothing.”

“But you must—you must! I want to make you understand something.
This morning I see your note in the papers. Every day, every day for seven
whole long years, wherever I have been, I have looked. In the papers of
India. Sometimes in the papers of France, of England.”

“I never even dreamed that you left India,” said Nicol Brinn, hoarsely.
“It was through the Times of India that I said I would communicate with
you.”

“Once we never left India. Now we do—sometimes. But listen. I
prepared to come when—he—”

Nicol Brinn’s clasp of Naida tightened cruelly.

“Oh, you hurt me!” she moaned. “Please let me speak. He gave me your name
and told me to bring you!”

“What! What!”

Nicol Brinn dropped his arms and stood, as a man amazed, watching her.

“Last night there was a meeting outside London.”

“You don’t want me to believe there are English members?”

“Yes. There are. Many. But let me go on. Somehow—somehow I don’t
understand—he finds you are one—”

“My God!”

“And you are not present last night! Now, do you understand? So he sends
me to tell you that a car will be waiting at nine o’clock to-night outside
the Cavalry Club. The driver will be a Hindu. You know what to say. Oh, my
Nicol, my Nicol, go for my sake! You know it all! You are clever. You can
pretend. You can explain you had no call. If you refuse—”

Nicol Brinn nodded grimly. “I understand! But, good God! How has he found
out? How has he found out?”

“I don’t know!” moaned Naida. “Oh, I am frightened—so frightened!”

A discreet rap sounded upon the door.

Nicol Brinn crossed and stood, hands clasped behind him, before the
mantelpiece. “In,” he said.

Hoskins entered. “Detective Sergeant Stokes wishes to see you at once,
sir.”

Brinn drew a watch from his waistcoat pocket. Attached to it was a fob
from which depended a little Chinese Buddha. He consulted the timepiece
and returned it to his pocket.

“Eight-twenty-five,” he muttered, and glanced across to where Naida,
wide-eyed, watched him. “Admit Detective Sergeant Stokes at
eight-twenty-six, and then lock the door.”

“Very good, sir.”

Hoskins retired imperturbably.

CHAPTER XVI. NICOL BRINN GOES OUT

Detective Sergeant Stokes was a big, dark, florid man, the word
“constable” written all over him. Indeed, as Wessex had complained more
than once, the mere sound of Stokes’s footsteps was a danger signal for
any crook. His respect for his immediate superior, the detective
inspector, was not great. The methods of Wessex savoured too much of the
French school to appeal to one of Stokes’s temperament and outlook upon
life, especially upon that phase of life which comes within the province
of the criminal investigator.

Wessex’s instructions with regard to Nicol Brinn had been succinct: “Watch
Mr. Brinn’s chambers, make a note of all his visitors, but take no
definite steps respecting him personally without consulting me.”

Armed with these instructions, the detective sergeant had undertaken his
duties, which had proved more or less tedious up to the time that a
fashionably attired woman of striking but unusual appearance had inquired
of the hall porter upon which floor Mr. Nicol Brinn resided.

In her manner the detective sergeant had perceived something furtive.
There was a hunted look in her eyes, too.

When, at the end of some fifteen or twenty minutes, she failed to
reappear, he determined to take the initiative himself. By intruding upon
this prolonged conference he hoped to learn something of value. Truth to
tell, he was no master of finesse, and had but recently been promoted from
an East End district where prompt physical action was of more value than
subtlety.

As a result, then, he presently found himself in the presence of the
immovable Hoskins; and having caused his name to be announced, he was
requested to wait in the lobby for one minute. Exactly one minute had
elapsed when he was shown into that long, lofty room, which of late had
been the scene of strange happenings.

Nicol Brinn was standing before the fireplace, hands clasped behind him,
and a long cigar protruding from the left corner of his mouth. No one else
was present, so far as the detective could see, but he glanced rapidly
about the room in a way which told the man who was watching that he had
expected to find another present. He looked into the unfathomable, light
blue eyes of Nicol Brinn, and became conscious of a certain mental
confusion.

“Good evening, sir,” he said, awkwardly. “I am acting in the case
concerning the disappearance of Mr. Paul Harley.”

“Yes,” replied Brinn.

“I have been instructed to keep an eye on these chambers.”

“Yes,” repeated the high voice.

“Well, sir”—again he glanced rapidly about-“I don’t want to intrude
more than necessary, but a lady came in here about half an hour ago.”

“Yes,” drawled Brinn. “It’s possible.”

“It’s a fact,” declared the detective sergeant. “If it isn’t troubling you
too much, I should like to know that lady’s name. Also, I should like a
chat with her before she leaves.”

“Can’t be done,” declared Nicol Brinn. “She isn’t here.”

“Then where is she?”

“I couldn’t say. She went some time ago.”

Stokes stood squarely before Nicol Brinn—a big, menacing figure; but
he could not detect the slightest shadow of expression upon the other’s
impassive features. He began to grow angry. He was of that sanguine
temperament which in anger acts hastily.

“Look here, sir,” he said, and his dark face flushed. “You can’t play
tricks on me. I’ve got my duty to do, and I am going to do it. Ask your
visitor to step in here, or I shall search the premises.”

Nicol Brinn replaced his cigar in the right corner of his mouth:
“Detective Sergeant Stokes, I give you my word that the lady to whom you
refer is no longer in these chambers.”

Stokes glared at him angrily. “But there is no other way out,” he
blustered.

“I shall not deal with this matter further,” declared Brinn, coldly. “I
may have vices, but I never was a liar.”

“Oh,” muttered the detective sergeant, taken aback by the cold
incisiveness of the speaker. “Then perhaps you will lead the way, as I
should like to take a look around.”

Nicol Brinn spread his feet more widely upon the hearthrug. “Detective
Sergeant Stokes,” he said, “you are not playing the game. Inspector Wessex
passed his word to me that for twenty-four hours my movements should not
be questioned or interfered with. How is it that I find you here?”

Stokes thrust his hands in his pockets and coughed uneasily. “I am not a
machine,” he replied; “and I do my own job in my own way.”

“I doubt if Inspector Wessex would approve of your way.”

“That’s my business.”

“Maybe, but it is no affair of yours to interfere with private affairs of
mine, Detective Sergeant. See here, there is no lady in these chambers.
Secondly, I have an appointment at nine o’clock, and you are detaining
me.”

“What’s more,” answered Stokes, who had now quite lost his temper, “I
intend to go on detaining you until I have searched these chambers and
searched them thoroughly.”

Nicol Brinn glanced at his watch. “If I leave in five minutes, I’ll be in
good time,” he said. “Follow me.”

Crossing to the centre section of a massive bookcase, he opened it, and it
proved to be a door. So cunning was the design that the closest scrutiny
must have failed to detect any difference between the dummy books with
which it was decorated, and the authentic works which filled the shelves
to right and to left of it. Within was a small and cosy study. In contrast
with the museum-like room out of which it opened, it was furnished in a
severely simple fashion, and one more experienced in the study of complex
humanity than Detective Sergeant Stokes must have perceived that here the
real Nicol Brinn spent his leisure hours. Above the mantel was a
life-sized oil painting of Mrs. Nicolas Brinn; and whereas the great room
overlooking Piccadilly was exotic to a degree, the atmosphere of the study
was markedly American.

Palpably there was no one there. Nor did the two bedrooms, the kitchen,
and the lobby afford any more satisfactory evidence. Nicol Brinn led the
way back from the lobby, through the small study, and into the famous room
where the Egyptian priestess smiled eternally. He resumed his place upon
the hearthrug. “Are you satisfied, Detective Sergeant?”

“I am!” Stokes spoke angrily. “While you kept me talking, she slipped out
through that study, and down into the street.”

“Ah,” murmured Nicol Brinn.

“In fact, the whole business looks very suspicious to me,” continued the
detective.

“Sorry,” drawled Brinn, again consulting his watch. “The five minutes are
up. I must be off.”

“Not until I have spoken to Scotland Yard, sir.”

“You wish to speak to Scotland Yard?”

“I do,” said Stokes, grimly.

Nicol Brinn strode to the telephone, which stood upon a small table almost
immediately in front of the bookcase. The masked door remained ajar.

“You are quite fixed upon detaining me?”

“Quite,” said Stokes, watching him closely.

In one long stride Brinn was through the doorway, telephone in hand!
Before Stokes had time to move, the door closed violently, in order, no
doubt, to make it shut over the telephone cable which lay under it!

Detective Sergeant Stokes fell back, gazed wildly at the false books for a
moment, and then, turning, leaped to the outer door. It was locked!

In the meanwhile, Nicol Brinn, having secured the door which communicated
with the study, walked out into the lobby where Hoskins was seated.
Hoskins stood up.

“The lady went, Hoskins?”

“She did, sir.”

Nicol Brinn withdrew the key from the door of the room in which Detective
Sergeant Stokes was confined. Stokes began banging wildly upon the panels
from within.

“That row will continue,” Nicol Brinn said, coldly; “perhaps he will shout
murder from one of the windows. You have only to say you had no key. I am
going out now. The light coat, Hoskins.”

Hoskins unemotionally handed coat, hat, and cane to his master and,
opening the front door, stood aside. The sound of a window being raised
became audible from within the locked room.

“Probably,” added Nicol Brinn, “you will be arrested.”

“Very good, sir,” said Hoskins. “Good-night, sir...”

CHAPTER XVII. WHAT HAPPENED TO HARLEY

Some two hours after Paul Harley’s examination of Jones, the
ex-parlourmaid, a shabby street hawker appeared in the Strand, bearing a
tray containing copies of “Old Moore’s Almanac.” He was an ugly-looking
fellow with a split lip, and appeared to have neglected to shave for at
least a week. Nobody appeared to be particularly interested, and during
his slow progression from Wellington Street to the Savoy Hotel he smoked
cigarettes almost continuously. Trade was far from brisk, and the vendor
of prophecies filled in his spare time by opening car doors, for which
menial service he collected one three-penny bit and several sixpences.

This commercial optimist was still haunting the courtyard of the hotel at
a time when a very handsome limousine pulled up beside the curb and a
sprucely attired Hindu stepped out. One who had been in the apartments of
Ormuz Khan must have recognized his excellency’s private secretary.
Turning to the chauffeur, a half-caste of some kind, and ignoring the
presence of the prophet who had generously opened the door, “You will
return at eight o’clock,” he said, speaking perfect and cultured English,
“to take his excellency to High Claybury. Make a note, now, as I shall be
very busy, reminding me to call at Lower Claybury station for a parcel
which will be awaiting me there.”

“Yes, sir,” replied the chauffeur, and he touched his cap as the Hindu
walked into the hotel.

The salesman reclosed the door of the car, and spat reflectively upon the
pavement.

Limping wearily, he worked his way along in the direction of Chancery
Lane. But, before reaching Chancery Lane, he plunged into a maze of courts
with which he was evidently well acquainted. His bookselling enterprise
presently terminated, as it had commenced, at The Chancery Agency.

Once more safe in his dressing room, the pedler rapidly transformed
himself into Paul Harley, and Paul Harley, laying his watch upon the table
before him, lighted his pipe and indulged in half an hour’s close
thinking.

His again electing to focus his attention upon Ormuz Khan was this time
beyond reproach. It was the course which logic dictated. Until he had
attempted the task earlier in the day, he could not have supposed it so
difficult to trace the country address of a well-known figure like that of
the Persian.

This address he had determined to learn, and, having learned it, was also
determined to inspect the premises. But for such a stroke of good luck as
that which had befallen him at the Savoy, he could scarcely have hoped.
His course now lay clearly before him. And presently, laying his pipe
aside, he took up a telephone which stood upon the dressing table and rang
up a garage with which he had an account.

“Hello, is that you, Mason?” he said. “Have the racer to meet me at seven
o’clock, half-way along Pall Mall.”

Never for a moment did he relax his vigilance. Observing every precaution
when he left The Chancery Agency, he spent the intervening time at one of
his clubs, from which, having made an early dinner, he set off for Pall
Mall at ten minutes to seven. A rakish-looking gray car resembling a giant
torpedo was approaching slowly from the direction of Buckingham Palace.
The driver pulled up as Paul Harley stepped into the road, and following a
brief conversation Harley set out westward, performing a detour before
heading south for Lower Claybury, a little town with which he was only
slightly acquainted. No evidence of espionage could he detect, but the
note of danger spoke intimately to his inner consciousness; so that when,
the metropolis left behind, he found himself in the hilly Surrey
countryside, more than once he pulled up, sitting silent for a while and
listening intently. He failed, always, to detect any sign of pursuit.

The night was tropically brilliant, hot, and still, but saving the distant
murmur of the city, and ordinary comings and goings along the country
roads, there was nothing to account for a growing anxiety of which he
became conscious.

He was in gunshot of Old Claybury church tower, when the sight of a
haystack immediately inside a meadow gate suggested a likely hiding place
for the racer; and, having run the car under cover, Harley proceeded on
foot to the little railway station. He approached a porter who leaned in
the doorway. “Could you direct me to the house of his excellency Ormuz
Khan?” he inquired.

“Yes, sir,” was the reply. “If you follow the uphill road on the other
side of the station until you come to the Manor Park—you will see
the gates—and then branch off to the right, taking the road facing
the gates. Hillside—that’s the name of the house—is about a
quarter of a mile along.”

Dusk was beginning to fall and, although the nature of his proposed
operations demanded secrecy, he recognized that every hour was precious.
Accordingly he walked immediately back to the spot at which he had left
the car and, following the porter’s directions, drove over the line at the
level crossing immediately beyond the station, and proceeded up a
tree-lined road until he found himself skirting the railing of an
extensive tract of park land.

Presently heavy gates appeared in view; and then, to the right, another
lane in which the growing dusk had painted many shadows. He determined to
drive on until he should find a suitable hiding place. And at a spot, as
he presently learned, not a hundred yards from Hillside, he discovered an
opening in the hedge which divided the road from a tilled field. Into
this, without hesitation, he turned the racer, backing in, in order that
he might be ready for a flying start in case of emergency. Once more he
set out on foot.

He proceeded with caution, walking softly close to the side of the road,
and frequently pausing to listen. Advancing in this fashion, he found
himself standing ere long before an open gateway, and gazing along a drive
which presented a vista of utter blackness. A faint sound reached his ear—the
distant drone of a powerful engine. A big car was mounting the slope from
Lower Claybury Station.

CHAPTER XVIII. WHAT HAPPENED TO HARLEY—CONTINUED

Not until Harley came within sight of the house, a low, rambling Jacobean
building, did he attempt to take cover. He scrambled up a tree and got
astride of a wall. A swift survey by his electric torch of the ground on
the other side revealed a jungle of weeds in either direction.

He uttered an impatient exclamation. He calculated that the car was now
within a hundred yards of the end of the lane. Suddenly came an idea that
was born of emergency. Swarming up the tree to where its dense foliage
began, he perched upon a stout bough and waited.

Three minutes later came a blaze of light through the gathering darkness,
and the car which he had last seen at the Savoy was turned into the drive,
and presently glided smoothly past him below.

The interior lights were extinguished, so that he was unable to discern
the occupants. The house itself was also unilluminated. And when the car
pulled up before the porch, less than ten yards from his observation post,
he could not have recognized the persons who descended and entered
Hillside.

Indeed, only by the sound of the closing door did he know that they had
gone in. But two figures were easily discernible; and he judged them to be
those of Ormuz Khan and his secretary. He waited patiently, and ere long
the limousine was turned in the little courtyard before the porch and
driven out into the lane again. He did not fail to note that, the lane
regained, the chauffeur headed, not toward Lower Claybury, but away from
it.

He retained his position until the hum of the motor grew dim in the
distance, and was about to descend when he detected the sound of a second
approaching car! Acutely conscious of danger, he remained where he was.
Almost before the hum of the retiring limousine had become inaudible, a
second car entered the lane and turned into the drive of Hillside.

Harley peered eagerly downward, half closing his eyes in order that he
might not be dazzled by the blaze of the headlight. This was another
limousine, its most notable characteristic being that the blinds were
drawn in all the windows.

On this occasion, when the chauffeur stepped around and opened the door,
only one passenger alighted. There seemed to be some delay before he was
admitted, but Harley found it impossible to detect any details of the
scene being enacted in the shadowed porch.

Presently the second car was driven away, pursuing the same direction as
the first. Hot upon its departure came the drone of a third. The windows
of the third car also exhibited drawn blinds. As it passed beneath him he
stifled an exclamation of triumph. Vaguely, nebulously, the secret of this
dread thing Fire-Tongue, which had uplifted its head in England, appeared
before his mind’s eye. It was only necessary for him to assure himself
that the latest visitor had been admitted to the house before the next
move became possible. Accordingly he changed his position, settling
himself more comfortably upon the bough. And now he watched the three cars
perform each two journeys to some spot or spots unknown, and, returning,
deposit their passengers before the porch of Hillside. The limousine used
by Ormuz Khan, upon its second appearance had partaken of the same
peculiarity as the others: there were blinds drawn inside the windows.

Paul Harley believed that he understood precisely what this signified, and
when, after listening intently in the stillness of the night, he failed to
detect sounds of any other approach, he descended to the path and stole
toward the dark house.

There were French windows upon the ground floor, all of them closely
shuttered. Although he recognized that he was taking desperate chances, he
inspected each one of them closely.

Passing gently from window to window, his quest ultimately earned its
reward. Through a crack in one of the shutters a dim light shone out. His
heart was beating uncomfortably, although he had himself well in hand;
and, crawling into the recess formed by the window, he pressed his ear
against a pane and listened intently. At first he could hear nothing, but,
his investigation being aided by the stillness of the night, he presently
became aware that a voice was speaking within the room—deliberately,
musically. The beating of his heart seemed to make his body throb to the
very finger tips. He had recognized the voice to be the voice of Ormuz
Khan!

Now, his sense of hearing becoming attuned to the muffled tones, he began
to make out syllables, words, and, finally, sentences. Darkness wrapped
him about, so that no one watching could have seen his face. But he
himself knew that under the bronze which he never lost he had grown pale.
His heartbeats grew suddenly fainter, an eerie chill more intense than any
which the note of danger had ever occasioned caused him to draw sharply
back.

“My God!” he whispered. He drew his automatic swiftly from his pocket,
and, pressed against the wall beside the window, looked about him as a man
looks who finds himself surrounded by enemies. Not a sound disturbed the
stillness of the garden except for sibilant rustlings of the leaves,
occasioned by a slight breeze.

Paul Harley retreated step by step to the bushes. He held the pistol
tightly clenched in his right hand.

He had heard his own death sentence pronounced and he knew that it was
likely to be executed.

CHAPTER XIX. WHAT HAPPENED TO HARLEY—CONCLUDED

He regained the curve of the drive without meeting any opposition. There,
slipping the pistol into his pocket, he climbed rapidly up the tree from
which he had watched the arrival of the three cars, climbed over the wall,
and dropped into the weed jungle beyond. He crept stealthily forward to
the gap where he had concealed the racer, drawing nearer and nearer to the
bushes lining the lane. Only by a patch of greater darkness before him did
he realize that he had reached it. But when the realization came one word
only he uttered: “Gone!”

His car had disappeared!

Despair was alien to his character: A true Englishman, he never knew when
he was beaten. Beyond doubt, now, he must accept the presence of hidden
enemies surrounding him, of enemies whose presence even his trained powers
of perception had been unable to detect. The intensity of the note of
danger which he had recognized now was fully explained. He grew icily
cool, master of his every faculty. “We shall see!” he muttered, grimly.

Feeling his way into the lane, he set out running for the highroad, his
footsteps ringing out sharply upon the dusty way. The highroad gained, he
turned, not to the left, but to the right, ran up the bank and threw
himself flatly down upon it, lying close to the hedge and watching the
entrance to the lane. Nothing appeared; nothing stirred. He knew the
silence to be illusive; he blamed himself for having ventured upon such a
quest without acquainting himself with the geography of the neighbourhood.

Great issues often rest upon a needle point. He had no idea of the
direction or extent of the park land adjoining the highroad. Nevertheless,
further inaction being out of the question, creeping along the grassy
bank, he began to retreat from the entrance to the lane. Some ten yards he
had progressed in this fashion when his hidden watchers made their first
mistake.

A faint sound, so faint that only a man in deadly peril could have
detected it, brought him up sharply. He crouched back against the hedge,
looking behind him. For a long time he failed to observe anything. Then,
against the comparatively high tone of the dusty road, he saw a silhouette—the
head and shoulders of someone who peered out cautiously.

Still as the trees above him he crouched, watching, and presently, bent
forward, questing to right and left, questing in a horribly suggestive
animal fashion, the entire figure of the man appeared in the roadway.

As Paul Harley had prayed would be the case, his pursuers evidently
believed that he had turned in the direction of Lower Claybury. A vague,
phantom figure, Harley saw the man wave his arm, whereupon a second man
joined him—a third—and, finally, a fourth.

Harley clenched his teeth grimly, and as the ominous quartet began to move
toward the left, he resumed his slow retreat to the right—going ever
farther away, of necessity, from the only centre with which he was
acquainted and from which he could hope to summon assistance. Finally he
reached a milestone resting almost against the railings of the Manor Park.

Drawing a deep breath, he sprang upon the milestone, succeeded in grasping
the top of the high iron railings, and hauled himself up bodily.

Praying that the turf might be soft, he jumped. Fit though he was, and
hardened by physical exercise, the impact almost stunned him. He came down
like an acrobat—left foot, right foot, and then upon his hands, but
nevertheless he lay there for a moment breathless and temporarily numbed
by the shock.

In less than a minute he was on his feet again and looking alertly about
him. Striking into the park land, turning to the left, and paralleling the
highroad, he presently came out upon the roadway, along which under
shelter of a straggling hedge, he began to double back. In sight of the
road dipping down to Lower Claybury he crossed, forcing his way through a
second hedge thickly sown with thorns.

Badly torn, but careless of such minor injuries, he plunged heavily
through a turnip field, and, bearing always to the left, came out finally
upon the road leading to the station, and only some fifty yards from the
bottom of the declivity.

A moment he paused, questioning the silence. He was unwilling to believe
that he had outwitted his pursuers. His nerves were strung to highest
tension, and his strange gift of semi-prescience told him that danger was
at least as imminent as ever, even though he could neither see nor hear
his enemies. Therefore, pistol in hand again, he descended to the foot of
the hill.

He remembered having noticed, when he had applied to the porter for
information respecting the residence of Ormuz Khan, that upon a window
adjoining the entrance had appeared the words “Station Master.” The
station master’s office, therefore, was upon the distant side of the line.

Now came the hardest blow of all. The station was closed for the night.
Nor was there any light in the signal box. Evidently no other train was
due upon that branch line until some time in the early morning. The level
crossing gate was open, but before breaking cover he paused a while to
consider what he should do. Lower Claybury was one of those stations which
have no intimate connection with any township. The nearest house, so far
as Harley could recall, was fully twenty yards from the spot at which he
stood. Furthermore, the urgency of the case had fired the soul of the
professional investigator.

He made up his mind, and, darting out into the road, he ran across the
line, turned sharply, and did not pause until he stood before the station
master’s window. Then his quick wits were put to their ultimate test.

Right, left, it seemed from all about him, came swiftly pattering
footsteps! Instantly he divined the truth. Losing his tracks upon the
highroad above, a section of his pursuers had surrounded the station,
believing that he would head for it in retreat.

Paul Harley whipped off his coat in a flash, and using it as a ram,
smashed the window. He reached up, found the catch, and opened the sash.
In ten seconds he was in the room, and a great clatter told him that he
had overturned some piece of furniture.

Disentangling his coat, he sought and found the electric torch. He pressed
the button. No light came. It was broken! He drew a hissing breath, and
began to grope about the little room. At last his hand touched the
telephone, and, taking it up:

“Hello!” he said. “Hello!”

“Yes,” came the voice of the operator—“what number?”

“City 8951. Police business! Urgent!”

One, two, three seconds elapsed, four, five, six.

“Hello!” came the voice of Innes.

“That you, Innes?” said Harley. And, interrupting the other’s reply: “I am
by no means safe, Innes! I am in one of the tightest corners of my life.
Listen: Get Wessex! If he’s off duty, get Burton. Tell him to bring—”

Someone leaped in at the broken window behind the speaker. Resting the
telephone upon the table, where he had found it, Harley reached into his
hip pocket and snapped out his automatic.

Dimly he could hear Innes speaking. He half-turned, raised the pistol, and
knew a sudden intense pain at the back of his skull. A thousand lights
seemed suddenly to split the darkness. He felt himself sinking into an
apparently bottomless pit.

CHAPTER XX. CONFLICTING CLUBS

“Any news, Wessex?” asked Innes, eagerly, starting up from his chair as
the inspector entered the office.

Wessex shook his head, and sitting down took out and lighted a cigarette.

“News of a sort,” he replied, slowly, “but nothing of any value, I am
afraid. My assistant, Stokes, has distinguished himself.”

“In what way?” asked Innes, dully, dropping back into his chair.

These were trying days for the indefatigable secretary. Believing that
some clue of importance might come to light at any hour of the day or
night he remained at the chambers in Chancery Lane, sleeping nightly in
the spare room.

“Well,” continued the inspector, “I had detailed him to watch Nicol Brinn,
but my explicit instructions were that Nicol Brinn was not to be molested
in any way.”

“What happened?”

“To-night Nicol Brinn had a visitor—possibly a valuable witness.
Stokes, like an idiot, allowed her to slip through his fingers and tried
to arrest Brinn!”

“What? Arrest him!” cried Innes.

“Precisely. But I rather fancy,” added the inspector, grimly, “that Mr.
Stokes will think twice before taking leaps like that in the dark again.”

“You say he tried to arrest him. What do you mean by that?”

“I mean that Nicol Brinn, leaving Stokes locked in his chambers, went out
and has completely disappeared!”

“But the woman?”

“Ah, the woman! There’s the rub. If he had lain low and followed the
woman, all might have been well. But who she was, where she came from, and
where she has gone, we have no idea.”

“Nicol Brinn must have been desperate to adopt such measures?”

Detective Inspector Wessex nodded.

“I quite agree with you.”