Chapter Twenty Five. The Girl and the Man.

Gwen Griffin had appointed half-past eight as the hour to meet her mysterious friend “Red Mullet” outside the “Tube” station at the corner of Queen’s Road, Bayswater.

Immediately after dinner she had slipped up to her room, exchanging her silk blouse for a stuff one, and putting on her hat and fur jacket, went out, leaving her father alone in the study. He was—as now was his habit every evening—busy making those bewildering calculations, as he tested the various numerical ciphers upon the original Hebrew text of Ezekiel.

Through the damp misty night she hurried along the Bayswater Road, until she came within the zone of electricity around the station, where she saw the tall figure of her friend, wearing a heavy overcoat and dark green felt hat, awaiting her.

“This is really a most pleasant surprise, Miss Griffin,” he cried cheerily, as he raised his hat, and took her little gloved hand. “But—well, we can’t walk about the street in order to talk, can we? Why not drive to my rooms? You’re not afraid of me now—are you?” he laughed.

“No, Mr Mullet,” was her quick answer. “I trust you, because you have already proved yourself my good friend.”

Truth to tell, however, she was not eager to go to that place where she had spent those anxious never-to-be-forgotten days, yet, as he suggested it, she could not very well refuse. One thing was quite certain, she was as safe in his hands as in her own home.

Therefore, he hailed a “taxi” from the rank across the way, and they at once drove in the direction of the Marble Arch.

Hardly, however, had they left the kerb, when a second “taxi” upon the rank, turned suddenly into the roadway and followed them. Within, lolling back and well-concealed in the darkness, sat Jim Jannaway.

A quarter of an hour later, Mullet let himself in with his latch-key, and the girl ascended those carpeted stairs she recollected so well.

In his own warm room Mullet stirred the fire until it blazed merrily, and then helping the girl off with her jacket, drew up a chair for her, taking one himself.

Her sweet innocent face, frankness of manner, and neatness of dress charmed him again, as it had when he had been forced against his will to keep her prisoner there. As he gazed across at her, he, careless adventurer that he had been for years, a man, with a dozen aliases and as many different abodes, recollected their strange ménage.

“Well,” he said with a smile, “I was really delighted to get a note from you, Miss Griffin. You said in it that you wished to consult me. What about?”

“About several things, Mr Mullet,” answered the girl, leaning her elbow upon the chair arm and looking straight in his face. “First, I am very unhappy. My position is an extremely uncomfortable one.”

“How?”

“I have kept the promise of silence I gave you, and as a consequence Frank Farquhar, the man to whom I was engaged, has left me.”

“Left you!” he echoed. “He suspects something wrong—eh?”

She nodded in the affirmative.

“That’s bad, Miss Gwen—very bad!” he said with a changed countenance. “I know well what you must suffer, poor girl. You love him—eh?”

“Very dearly.”

“And I am the cause of your estrangement,” he remarked in a low sympathetic tone.

“Ah! it was not your fault, Mr Mullet,” she cried, “I know that. Do not think that I am blaming you. The real blackguard is that red-faced man and his accomplice—the man who enticed me here on such a plausible pretext.”

“I am also to blame. Miss Gwen,” replied the big fellow with the bristly red moustache. “A deep game is being played, and, alas! I am compelled to be one of the players. It is being played against your father.”

“I know that,” she said. “I overheard Doctor Diamond telling my father how you had furnished him with a copy of that document describing the remarkable discovery of Professor Holmboe.”

“Hush!” cried Mullet quickly, glancing at the door that stood slightly ajar. “There’s nobody here, for the man who usually does for me is ill. Yet we’d better not discuss that action of mine, Miss Gwen. I only did it in order to repay in part a great service the little Doctor has rendered me. So,” he added, “the Doctor took the copy to your father?”

“Yes. He had previously, through Mr Farquhar, consulted my father regarding the half-burnt fragments in his possession. But the other day he came, bearing the full document, which they discussed for a couple of hours or more. Now, Mr Mullet,” she said, “you have been a very good and kind friend to me; therefore, I’m wondering if you would render us a further service?”

“Anything in my power I will most willingly do,” replied the blasé man, seeking permission to light his cigarette.

“I first want to know,” she exclaimed, “who is that blackguard who came here and demanded to know my father’s business?”

“He’s a person of whom you need have no concern,” was his evasive reply.

“But he possesses a copy of the statement by Professor Holmboe?”

“He does. And he has instituted an active search in which three of the greatest scholars on the Continent are assisting, in order to ascertain the key to the cipher alleged by the Russian professor to exist in the prophecy of Ezekiel.”

“But does he possess any manuscript of the Professor’s relating to the cipher?” inquired the girl, eagerly.

“Ah! that I do not know,” was his answer, “as far as I’m aware, he does not.”

“Nothing definite has yet been ascertained, I suppose?”

“Nothing actually definite,” he said. “But you can tell your father that Erich Haupt believes that at last he has struck the right line of inquiry.”

“Haupt!” she repeated. “Who is he?”

“Your father will know him as the great professor of Leipzig. He is now staying at the Waldorf Hotel.”

“But—well, Mr Mullet,” she said with some hesitation. “Pardon me for saying so, but your friends seem a very unscrupulous and remarkable lot.”

“And they are just as influential as they are unscrupulous,” he laughed. Then growing serious next moment, he added with a sigh, “Ah! Miss Gwen, if you only knew all, you’d realise how very delighted I’d be to cut myself adrift from such a rascally association.”

“Why don’t you?” she asked, looking straight into his eyes. “This business of the treasure of Israel is surely a big and lucrative one. Why don’t you leave them, and join my father, Mr Farquhar, and Doctor Diamond?”

“Well—shall I tell you the truth, Miss Griffin?” he asked, blowing a cloud of smoke from his lips as he contemplated the red end of his cigarette, “Because—well, because I dare not!”

“Dare not?”

“No,” he said in a strained voice. “You see my part has not been an altogether blameless one. Need I explain more than to say that very often, for my very bread, I have to depend upon these persons who are working against your father.”

The girl sighed, a painful expression crossing her brow.

“I wish I could help you, Mr Mullet,” she said seriously. “Can’t you possibly disassociate yourself from those scoundrels?”

He shook his head sadly.

The next instant she turned towards the door exclaiming:

“Hark! What was that? I heard a noise!”

“Nothing,” he laughed. “The window of the next room is open a little, and the wind has blown the door to.”

By this, she was reassured, even though she feared that the horrid red-faced man whose name he refused to tell her, might again reappear there as her inquisitor.

“It seems to me,” she said, “that your friends, whoever they are, are dishonourable men whose bread you are compelled to eat. Surely you are in a position quite as wretched as I am?”

“Yes,” he admitted. “But do me one favour, Miss Gwen. Never breathe to a soul that I’ve handed the copy of that document to the Doctor. If they knew that, they would never forgive me.”

“I will remain silent, and I’ll tell my father also to regard your action as confidential.”

“Tell Mr Farquhar also,” he urged.

“Ah!” sighed the girl. “Unfortunately I never see him now. He always meets my father at the Royal Societies Club—in order to avoid me.”

“Then there is an actual breach between you?”

“Yes,” she replied hoarsely. “He asked me certain questions, to which I could not reply without betraying you.”

“And you risked your love for a worthless fellow like myself!”

“Well? And did you not risk your liberty for my sake?” she asked. “Did you not protect me from that blackguard who would have struck me because I refused to answer his questions?”

“Oh, that was nothing, Miss Gwen. I am thinking of you.”

“Can you—will you assist my father?” she urged. “For myself I care nothing. But for my father’s reputation—in order to enhance it, and also that through him Israel shall recover her sacred relics, I am ready to sacrifice anything. Disassociate yourself from these men, and assist us, Mr Mullet. Do.”

“That is, alas! impossible,” was his slow response. “It would mean my instant ruin. Would it not be better if I remained in the enemy’s camp? Reflect for a moment.”

“I wish you could meet my father,” she said.

“Well, if he’d really like to see me, perhaps I might call upon him.”

“He wants so much to know you. He was only saying so when we sat together last night after dinner.”

“But you know, Miss Gwen, I’m not the sort of man that he would care to associate with.”

“You have been my friend and protector, Mr Mullet, and surely that is sufficient I have always found you a gentleman—more so than many others who pose as honest men.”

“Well,” he said. “I don’t pose. I’ve told you the simple truth.”

“And I admire you for it. You once said you’d tell me all about your own little daughter.”

He was silent for a moment, and she saw she had touched a tender chord in his memory.

“I’ll tell you about little Aggie one day; not now, please, Miss Griffin.”

“Well, tell me, then, why your friends are so antagonistic towards my father?”

“For several reasons. One is that the man you don’t like—the one with the red-face—is a fierce hater of the Jewish race. His own avarice knows no bounds, and he has sworn to recover the treasure of Israel if it still exists and when recovered he will break up and melt the sacred vessels and destroy the sacred relies in order to exhibit to the Jews his malice and his power.”

“Why, it would be disgraceful to desecrate such objects—even though he is a Gentile.”

“Certainly. But your father’s known leaning towards the Jews—his friendship with certain Rabbis, and the assistance he has once or twice rendered the Jewish community in London, have aroused the ire of this man, who is now his bitterest and most unscrupulous opponent.”

“Then you can assist us, Mr Mullet—if you will.”

“I fear that is impossible—certainly not openly,” was his reply. “Personally, I would not lift a finger to help one whose fixed idea is despoliation and desecration of the sacred objects. My sympathies, my dear Miss Gwen, are entirely with you in your own unfortunate position, and with your father in his strenuous efforts to discover the key to this cipher, and afterwards place the expedition to Palestine upon a firm business basis, the most sacred treasures to be handed over to their rightful owners, the Jews.”

“Why does this man, whose name you refuse to tell me, so hate the Jews?”

“Because, in certain of his huge financial dealings, they have actually ousted him by their shrewdness combined with honesty,” he answered. “It has ever been, and still is, the accepted fashion to cast opprobrium upon the Jews. Yet, in my varied career, I have often found a Jew more honest than a Christian, and certainly he never hides dishonesty beneath a cloak of religion in which he does not believe, as do so many of your so-called Christians in the City.”

“Then you are, like my father, an admirer of the Hebrew race?” she said, rather surprised.

“I am. In them as a class I find no cant or hypocrisy, no humbug of their clerical life as we have it, alas! apparent so often in our own churches, while among the Jews themselves a helpful hand is outstretched everywhere. They settle their own quarrels in their own courts of law and they adhere strictly to their religious teaching. Of course, there are good and bad Jews, as there are good and bad Christians. But with the anti-Jewish feeling so apparent everywhere throughout Europe, I have nothing in common.”

“And because of that, Mr Mullet, you will assist us—won’t you?” she urged.

The red-haired adventurer hesitated.