The Fourth Plague (15 page)

He smiled, shrugged his shoulders, and, turning to the driver, directed him to a fashionable restaurant. For men, even great conspirators, must lunch.

He stopped the car in Oxford Street to buy an evening newspaper. It was filled, as had been the morning journals, with speculations on the Fourth Plague. Would the “Red Hand” put their threat into execution? One journal had found a scientist who had discovered a specific, another gave a perfect pen picture of Tillizini. Wild and improbable rumours found prominence, there was nothing of any real account. He was closing the paper when a little paragraph which had evidently been inserted to fill up caught his eye at the bottom of the column.

“The unfortunate man, Mansingham, who has added to the tragic variety of his career by being associated with the disappearance of Miss Marjorie Meagh, was an expert swimmer, and at the annual meeting of the Burboro' Aquatic Club last night sympathetic references were made to his disappearance.”

Festini frowned. A swimmer? Of course it was absurd. But there might have been grave danger in throwing him into the water. He was stunned, though, and three days had passed without any sign of his reappearance.

He knew, by careful inquiry, that nobody had been picked up on the coast, but it sometimes happened that weeks elapsed before the sea gave up its dead. It was absurd to bother about that. But throughout his luncheon he found the thought intruding in his mind. Suppose this man turned up? It would have been better to have followed out the suggestion of Il Bue and have killed him right away.

The waiter brought him his bill, and he paid, tipping the servant lavishly.

He walked out of the hall into the big vestibule of the restaurant, selected a cigar at the little cigar counter, and strolled out into Piccadilly.

His car, driven by a trusted member of the “Red Hand,” followed him along the broad, crowded thoroughfare at a snail's pace.

At the corner of Piccadilly Circus he suddenly came face to face with Frank Gallinford.

The Englishman was looking ill; the strain of the past few days was telling on him. The loss of his fiancée was preying on his mind; he had not slept. His agents were searching the country from end to end. He had also established a little police organization of his own, for Frank Gallinford was a fairly wealthy man.

The two men stopped, staring at each other for the fraction of a second, then Festini held out his hand with a suave smile.

“How do you do Mr. Gallinford?” he said.

Frank was in no mood for conversation or condolence. He uttered a few conventional words, shook hands hurriedly and passed on, leaving Festini to finish his stroll.

Frank had not gone twenty yards before somebody pressed his arm softly. He looked round. A tall man was standing at his side. At first he did not recognize him in his rough workman's kit and his little moustache, but when he spoke he knew him.

“Go back after Festini,” said Tillizini quickly. “Talk to him about anything you like, hold him in conversation for a few minutes,” he turned and walked back with the other a little way, “and when you get into St. James' Street turn off to the right. The street is up. Induce him by any art in your power to go to the other end of that street.”

“But why?”

“No, do not ask, ‘Why,'” said Tillizini. He gave one of his rare gestures of impatience. “Do as I tell you.”

Frank nodded. Though he had no heart for the job, he quickened his steps and overtook Festini.

Tillizini watched them. He saw them strolling aimlessly along, and turn into the street he had indicated. The waiting car on the other side of the road entered the street and then stopped; the road was up, and beyond half-way down there was no thoroughfare. The chauffeur looked round anxiously. He had to back out and make a detour by the way of the lower end of Regent Street and Piccadilly. He had another alternative, which was to wait. He looked undecided. He was assisted in his decision as to what he should do by the gesture of a policeman, who ordered him back to the main street.

Very slowly the car backed out. It was a minute or two before he could bring the long Napier into the stream of traffic moving up towards Piccadilly Circus. There was a block here, and another wait ensued.

Tillizini had posted himself where he could watch every movement. He saw the look of anxiety on the chauffeur's face. The opportunity he had been waiting for for the last two hours now presented itself. He threaded his way through the block of traffic and passed the car. He took something from his pocket and, bending over the rear wheel, pressed down his hand upon it. A broad strip of rubber with a steel clamp at either end.

Deftly he fixed it over the wheel. In its centre an arrow head projected. It had been carefully prepared and only the expert, interested in the accessories of cars, would have thought it unusual.

With one glance to see that his work had been well done, he slipped through the traffic, and gained the other side of the road. He walked a little way down Regent Street, from thence he saw the two men talking. Festini was walking back. He had missed the car and had understood why it had failed to follow him.

Tillizini saw him take a hurried farewell of Frank and walk quickly up the street. The professor smiled. It appealed to him, this spectacle of Festini and his car playing hide-and-seek with one another.

He did not attempt to rejoin Frank, instead he called a cab, which came reluctantly, for this man in working clothes did not inspire confidence, and drove straight to Scotland Yard.

That night every police station in England received a notification, and in the early hours of the morning, policemen on foot, cyclists and mounted men were searching the wet roads for the track of a motor car which displayed an arrow at regular intervals.

XV. —THE HOUSE BY THE RIVER

FROM HER WINDOW MARJORIE could see the broad and sluggish river. When the fog did not veil every object from sight, she caught a glimpse of big ships passing up and down; fussy little tugs drawing strings of lighters, brown-sailed barges that went with stately leisure to the sea. In the foreground was marshland, uncultivated.

The sluggish river, for such it was at a distance of a quarter of a mile, was the River Thames; the marshland was that unlovely stretch of swamp on its north bank, between Southend and Barking.

By putting her face close to the window she could see a small, low-roofed building, tarred and weatherproof, from which men in white overalls came and went.

The house she was in was an old one, as houses go. It was built of brick; the rooms were lofty and cold and a little damp.

Even in the room which had been allotted to her use, the paper had peeled off the wall in great pieces, and not even the fire, which the hard-faced Italian woman who attended her kept fed, dispelled the chilly dreariness of the apartment.

She had been brought here by night from the house on the cliff. She had lain down to sleep after supper in her Kentish prison and had awakened to find herself lying in the room she now tenanted.

The knowledge that they must have drugged her food filled her with panic.

The day following her arrival she had refused to eat or drink, and now it was not until the Italian woman had partaken from the dishes she supplied, before Marjorie's eyes, that the girl consented to touch the food.

Fortunately, she numbered amongst her accomplishments a working knowledge of Italian. Of late she had polished up her acquaintance with the language. Frank's work mainly lay in Italy, and she had seen the necessity for becoming proficient.

But she received no satisfactory reply to any of her inquiries. She had not seen Festini since that day on the cliff, though she had heard his voice often enough.

She guessed rather than knew that in the little low-roofed house near by, was being prepared that terrible culture which was to bring England to her knees in submission.

Everything that Festini could do to relieve the monotony of her life, he had done.

She was plentifully supplied with books and papers, and to serve her table he had secured a perfect Italian cook.

The only man she had spoken to was a tall giant of a man, whom she had seen on the cliff with Festini.

He answered her questions gruffly, and in monosyllables.

He had merely come into the room, she gathered, to see to the security of the bars which had been fixed outside the window. She was ill with anxiety; she dare not give her imagination its rein.

It was Frank she thought of—Frank, whom she knew would be distracted with grief; and at night she alternately wept and prayed for the strength and sanctuary of his arms.

It was on the third day following her abduction. She was sitting trying to read by the window, when the click of the lock brought her to her feet.

She heard the voice of Festini outside, and in a moment he had come into the room, locking the door behind him.

They stood confronting one another. She had walked swiftly to the centre of the room, and placed the table between them.

“Well?” he said, with his pleasant smile, “I hope you have everything you want.”

She made no reply at once. Then—

“I want my freedom,” she said.

“That,” he said, with a little bow, “I am sorry I cannot grant you. It is necessary for my health and security that you should stay a little longer. Afterwards, I hope to make you the wife of one of the richest men in Europe.”

“That will never be,” she said, steadily. “I would sooner be the first victim of the plague you threaten, than endure that humiliation.”

He winced at the words.

“It is no humiliation,” he said, a little haughtily. “In my veins runs the best blood of Italy. It is an honour to be the chosen bride of Festini.”

She was amazed at the unexpected vanity of the man.

She had never regarded him, even at the most friendly period of their relationship, as more than a rather good-looking, well-mannered member of the middle classes. That he should esteem his birth as being sufficient to make him superior to censure was a strange point of view.

She looked at him, in spite of herself, with an added interest.

“I ask you to be my wife,” he said.

He emphasized the words.

“You ought to realize that, in addition to doing you an honour, I am also acting with great magnanimity. You are here alone,” he said, “entirely and absolutely at my mercy. You are surrounded by men and women who would question no act of mine, however barbarous it might seem to you. Do you understand?”

She understood too well.

She was safe unless she made quasi-friendly relationships impossible. She had need to temporize.

He may have guessed what was passing in her mind.

“Understand,” he said, “there is no escape from here, except as my wife. I will be patient without you. I have been patient with you,” he went on. “To-morrow a priest will marry us according to the rights of my Church.”

“To-morrow!” she gasped.

“To-morrow,” he said, a little mockingly. “It is rather soon, is it not? And you have no trousseau!”

He waved the objection away.

“That is a detail which can either be arranged or can be overridden.”

He made no attempt to touch her.

“May I sit down?” he asked.

She nodded, and he drew a chair forward to the table and seated himself.

“I think I ought to take you a little into my confidence,” he said, in his pleasant, matter-of-fact manner. “It is necessary to expedite matters. Your friend—how do you pronounce his name—Mansingham?—was picked up by a fishing smack. I think he swam out to sea and picked up the smack, but it is immaterial. He is alive, and, I have reason to believe, talkative.”

He saw the look of hope spring up in her face, and smiled.

“The fact that he will be able to identify me with this act of abduction,” he went on, “embarrasses me, but, fortunately, our scheme is so far advanced that there is no longer any necessity for me to disguise my association with the ‘Red Hand.'”

“The only thing which is a trifle annoying is that I must stay in this deadly place a few more days. All the work that is to be done my agents can do. But for your presence here it would be an impossible situation. Not for all the gold in England could I rusticate by the banks of the Thames—alone.”

His dazzling smile bewildered the girl. He had a trick of discussing the most outrageous propositions with a serious and convincing air. It was all superficial, but then his superficiality bit deeper into him than into most men.

At heart she knew him to be a cold-blooded and remorseless man, who would stop at nothing to gain his ends. It was only that the veneer of civilization was thicker, that the brute within him did not lie so close to the surface, which distinguished him from his comrades.

But the streak of cruelty was there, as he showed.

“By the way,” he said, “I met Mr. Gallinford the other day, and condoled with him upon your disappearance.”

“You brute!” she flamed. “How dare you mock me!”

“I like you when you are like that,” he said, admiringly. “You almost tempt me to continue to tell how ill and worn he looks.”

He laughed, but there was no note of merriment in the sound.

“A singularly thick-headed man! Had he been an Italian he would have known by my face, by the change in my eyes when your name was mentioned, that it was I”—he pointed to himself—“who had robbed him. But then these Englishmen are so phlegmatic! They soon forget. You must not worry very much about your Frank,” he said, as he rose to go. “In a year or two he will have married some comfortable Englishwoman, and have settled down to a life made up with shooting pheasants and discussing defective drainage.”

She was incapable of reply.

He went out of the room and locked the door behind him, leaving her alone, with her head on her arms—weeping from very anger.

He found Il Bue in the room below with two men who had just come in from the laboratory he had arranged in the wooden shed.

“Well?” he asked, moodily, as he flung himself into a chair at the head of the table. “What are the developments?”

“Signor,” said one of the men, “everything is ready. We have secured perfect cultures, even more perfect than those dispatched to the Bacteriological Institution.” Festini nodded.

“To-morrow I shall receive the Government's reply. I have asked them to advertise that reply in the columns of a newspaper.”

“And what will it be?” asked Il Bue, his eyes fixed upon Festini's face.

Festini shrugged.

“Who knows?” he said. “I think at the eleventh hour they will agree to my terms.”

One of the assistants in white was a thick-set man with a sour, bad-tempered face. He took no part in the subsequent discussion on the methods to be adopted for the distribution of the plague.

Festini had made elaborate precautions and had issued exhaustive literature for distribution amongst the members of the “Red Hand.”

He was sincere in his desire that the agents of his organization should escape the consequences of their own villainy.

When the discussion was finished, the surly man jerked his head round to Festini. He was sitting on his right hand, his elbows on the table, his big, fleshy hands clasped.

“What about this woman, Signor Festini?” he asked.

The young man looked at him steadily.

“‘This woman'?” he repeated, softly, “I do not know who you mean.”

The stout man jerked his head upwards. He was the kind of man who moved in jerks.

“She who is upstairs,” he said.

Festini got up very slowly from the table.

“You will understand, Gregorio,” he said, in his honeyed tones, “that you will never refer to that lady in such a way. Indeed,” he said, carefully, “you will never refer to her at all.”

“There are no secrets from the brethren,” grumbled the man. “We all want to know what is the plan with regard to her.” Without a word Festini's hand leapt out; his quick, strong fingers caught the other by the throat; with a sidelong twist he forced the man's head back over the table.

Festini was a strong man despite his frail physique.

“You dog!” he hissed in the man's purple face. “Must I answer to you for all I do?” The man struggled to recover his balance, but a long bright blade flashed in front of his eyes.

Festini hesitated, then he released his grip, and the man staggered up to his feet.

“Remember this,” said the Count. “Remember it all your life, Gregorio. It may serve you well one day—the recollection.” The man was livid and shaking.

“I'm sorry, Signor,” he said, humbly; “it was thoughtless. I did not intend to offend your Excellency.”

With a curt nod Festini dismissed him.

“And understand,” he said, “that I will not spare any man who speaks slightingly or lightly of the lady who is to be the Countess Festini. There is my plan, if you wish to know it. That is enough—too much, perhaps—certainly enough. I give you my best—you must give me obedience and faith. That is all I ask.”

He was in no mood of tolerance.

George Mansingham had arrived in England, and by this time Tillizini knew what he had already guessed. London was unsafe for Festini, and he was the type of man who scorned any disguise.

He must fret away his time in this God-forsaken spot; the fulfilment of his plans demanded it.

He stopped in the house long enough to don the white overall which had distinguished his companions, and went into the long wooden shed, Il Bue and the two men joining him at the entrance of the hut.

The only light came through a big skylight. House and shed had formed part of a boat-builder's establishment, long since bankrupt and fallen into decay. It suited his purpose admirably. It was far enough away from the high road to obtain seclusion. He had a plausible excuse for the presence of his men. The premises were ostensibly part of the properties of a little company he had formed some time before for the manufacture of synthetic rubber.

There is something about synthetic rubber and its manufacturers and inventors which keep an amused public at bay.

The shed was divided into two parts. In the first there were a number of test tubes, retorts and scientific apparatus upon a large bench.

The entrance to the second room was obtained through a stout door, which was fastened by two padlocks.

These the big man unfastened. Before he opened the door he pulled up from his chin an antiseptic mask, which he brought over his face and secured to the hood of his white gown.

The others followed his example.

They took up rubber gloves from the bench in the outer room and drew them on. Il Bue pulled the door open and a faint sweet scent came out to greet them.

In the centre of the inner and smaller compartment was a long narrow table on which, at intervals, rested four deep porcelain dishes under glass bell-covers.

They were no more to the sight than narrow strips of glass coated with a light-brown gelatinous substance, but each glass case held death in a terrible form.

Festini looked at them curiously. It was almost impossible to believe that these innocent-looking strips of dull glass could play so powerful a part.

“That is all?” said he, half to himself.

“That is all, Signor,” said Il Bue.

His big face was twisted in a puzzled grin.

“It seems a very simple thing,” he said, suspiciously; “why, I could smash it out of existence with a blow of my fist.”

The man with the sour face looked up at him sideways.

“You would die very soon,” he said.

He was the chemist of the party, a brilliant man with strange gifts, who had been brought into association with the “Red Hand” and found an outlet in their operations for the lawless and perverse spirit within him.