Chapter Twenty Four. A Page in Piccadilly.

A long, grey, hundred-horse-power racing motor-car with its two glaring head-lamps drew suddenly up in the falling darkness before the big house in Berkeley Square, and from it stepped Sir Felix Challas in his heavy fur coat, cap and goggles. He was a motor enthusiast, and declared that his runs on his high-power racer cleared the cobwebs from his brain, and braced up his nerves.

He had started forth soon after breakfast, lunched at the Mermaid at Wansford, eighty miles away up the Great North Road, and was now home again, just as darkness had set in.

He had sat beside his chauffeur in silence while being whirled along the great northern highway, for he always thought out the most ingenious of his schemes while travelling thus.

Ere he had ascended the steps of the house, the splendid car, which only a few weeks before had made a record on the Brooklands track, moved off to the well-appointed garage, where he kept his three other cars.

On entering his own luxurious little den on the left of the hall, he found Jim Jannaway comfortably ensconced before the fire, smoking one of his choicest cigars and with a whisky and soda at his elbow.

“Hulloa!” exclaimed Sir Felix surprised. “I thought you were on your way out to the East? You were to have left this morning, weren’t you?” And he threw off his heavy coat and stood with his back to the fire.

“Yes. But I’ve remained, because I’ve discovered something,” replied the other. “I’ve found out the reason why that girl Griffin got away.”

“Oh! Why?” asked Challas quickly. “It was a great misfortune for us. She’s evidently discovered who we are, and why we wanted the information.”

“Well—he played us false.”

“Who—Mullet?”

“Yes. The girl appealed to his honour, and all that, and he found out that she was a friend of that Doctor Diamond, the fellow who attended Holmboe before he died and got hold of a portion of his papers. This man, it appears, had befriended Mullet in some way—so he, like a fool, let her go.”

“Fool—idiot!” cried Challas. “Then the brute’s betrayed us!”

“Absolutely!”

“By letting the girl go, he’s exposed us. Griffin now knows that we are working against him. And he is, according to old Erich, the only man we have to fear.”

“Except that man Farquhar, partner with Sir George Gavin, the newspaper owner.”

“Ah! I forgot him. But surely he doesn’t count?”

“Yes, he does,” protested Jannaway. “He’s in love with the girl. Hence we must see that he turns his back upon her, or there may be further trouble. I foresee pretty awkward complications in that direction.”

“Very well, my dear boy, all that I leave to you,” answered Sir Felix, with a heavy, thoughtful look.

“But it does not lessen our danger. If we’re not careful we’ll lose the thing altogether,” Jannaway pointed out. “I’ve been a full fortnight making careful investigations. The Doctor called on Griffin the day before yesterday, and what’s more, the girl has written to Charlie, asking him to meet her.”

“How have you found that out?”

Jim Jannaway smiled.

“No matter,” he laughed. “Except that Laura, the parlour-maid at Pembridge, is a friend of mine. I took her to the Tivoli last Thursday. Told her I was a lawyer’s clerk.”

“By Jove, Jim,” exclaimed the Baronet, “you’re always ingenious when you’ve set your mind on worming out a secret.”

“A little love costs nothing,” laughed the nonchalant adventurer, “and very often does a lot.”

“Well, we must know what’s going on between them, that’s quite plain,” remarked Challas. “I never expected Charlie to give us away.”

“Bah! he always was chicken-hearted where women were concerned. He must have been in love once, I fancy, and hasn’t got over the attack yet.”

“We must be very watchful, Jim.”

“That’s why I didn’t leave for Constantinople, as you suggested,” was the other’s reply, as he tossed the end of his cigar into the fire and lazily rose from his comfortable chair. “My own idea, Felix, is that Charlie is growing far too scrupulous. One day we shall have him in a fit of remorse making some nasty confession or other, taking the consequences, and putting us both into a confounded hole. Think what it would mean for you!”

“By Jove, yes!” gasped the other, turning pale at the very suggestion of exposure. “We can’t afford to risk that.”

“I maintain that if Charlie lets the girl escape us and give us away, as he has done, then he’ll do something worse before long,” exclaimed the crafty man with a curious glance at the Baronet, whose back was at that moment turned to him.

Challas was silent. He clearly saw the drift of the man’s argument.

“Well?” he asked at last, lowering his voice. “What do you suggest?”

“Suggest? Why there’s only one course open, my dear fellow,” replied the other, glancing apprehensively at the door. “Get rid of him while there’s yet time.”

“He might retaliate.”

“Not if he’s arrested over in France,” Jannaway exclaimed. “The French police won’t bother over any information that he may give concerning us. Your reputation stands too high. They’ll only regard him as a type of gentlemanly blackmailer such as every wealthy man has to contend with. If we don’t do that, then good-bye to all our hopes concerning Holmboe’s secret,” he added.

“I fear I must agree with you, Jim,” said the other, very slowly. “He was a fool for not allowing you to force the truth from the girl. I had intended that she should assist us, and—”

“And by Heaven! she shall do so, even now, if you will only leave matters to me,” interrupted the clever, good-looking adventurer, leaning his back easily against the table.

“I leave them entirely to you,” the Baronet answered quickly. “Act just as you think fit, only remember there must be no exposure. I can’t afford that!”

“The secret discovered by that fellow Holmboe shall be ours,” declared Jim Jannaway, slowly and determinedly.

“It might be, if only Erich could discover the key to that infernal cipher. He told me yesterday that he suspected Professor Griffin had already solved the problem.”

“If he has, then I’ll compel the girl to obtain it for us. You understand!” he exclaimed quickly.

“Even though Charlie has become a weak fool, moved to penitence by some tub-thumping revivalist perhaps, I intend to carry through the scheme I devised. The secret of the treasure of Israel shall be ours, my dear Felix. You shall be the great benefactor to the Jewish race, and discover the sacred relics so long concealed.”

“Benefactor!” echoed the red-faced man with a short dry laugh. “Oh yes, I’ll show the Jews how I can repay them in their own coin. Only be careful—do, I beg of you. Charlie is not the man to take a blow lying down, you know.”

“You ought to know me well enough to be fully aware that I never act without consideration,” the younger man protested. “Jim Jannaway is no fool at a game of checkmate, I think.”

“There was that affair in Bordeaux,” remarked the Baronet in a rather hard voice.

“You believe that Red Mullet knows something of that!” laughed Jim, admiring the fine diamond ring upon his finger. “Bah, he is in entire ignorance. It was an unfortunate incident, I admit. But under the circumstances couldn’t be helped. But there—why need we recall it? You’re so fond of dwelling upon unpleasant themes,” he laughed. “You gave an extra five thousand to the Hospital Saturday Fund as a conscience-soother, didn’t you?”

The Baronet turned upon his heel, and walked to his writing-table, whereon stood an electric lamp shaded with green silk. Then, after turning over some letters, he asked suddenly:

“When does that girl meet Charlie?”

“To-night.”

“At her request?”

“Yes.”

“Very well. I leave everything to you,” Sir Felix said with a mysterious smile. “It would not be against our interests—if—well, if we had her in our hands again.”

Jim Jannaway nodded. He understood the suggestion perfectly.

“Charlie ought, I think, to be sent back to the Continent, don’t you agree?” he asked. “A timely warning that the police had learned of his return here, and he’d skip across by the next Channel service. Once over there, matters would be quite easy. The Leleu affair has never been cleared up, you know!” he added in a lower voice.

“I leave it entirely in your hands,” declared the plutocrat whom the public believed to be a high-minded philanthropist. “Whatever you do must be on your own responsibility, recollect.”

“But with your money. I want a couple of hundred.”

“Ah! hard up again, Jim,” sighed the other. But unlocking the safe opposite, the safe that contained the typed copy of the dead man’s document, the Baronet took out some banknotes and handed them to his cat’s-paw.

They were French notes. They were safer than English to give to persons like Jannaway, for the numbers could not be traced in cases of inquiries, while they could always be at once exchanged at any of the tourist offices. Sir Felix Challas, though compelled to employ men of the racing-tout stamp like Jim Jannaway, and unscrupulous concession-hunters like “Red Mullet,” was ever upon his guard.

He trusted his men, but in “Red Mullet” he had confessed himself sadly disappointed.

“Revivalists and missionaries have a lot to answer for,” was one of his pet phrases.

Jim Jannaway, slipping the notes into his pocket-book without troubling to count them, put on his smart overcoat and well-brushed silk hat, and wishing his employer an airy “good-evening,” strolled out into the damp chilliness of Berkeley Square, where he hailed a hansom and drove away.

He had given the man an address in Knightsbridge, but as the cab was turning from the misty gloom of Berkeley Street into the brightness of Piccadilly several persons were waiting at the left-hand kerb in order to cross the road.

Among them he apparently recognised somebody, for in an instant he drew back and turned his head the other way.

Next second the cab had rounded the corner and was on its way along Piccadilly. Yet he knew that he had sat there for several moments in the full glare of the electric lights in front of the Ritz Hotel, and he felt convinced that he had been recognised by the very last person in the world that he desired to encounter.

Jannaway sat there breathless, staring straight before him into the yellow mist, his eyes glaring as though an apparition had arisen before him.

He tried to laugh away his fears. After all, it must be only fancy, he reflected. Somebody bearing a strange resemblance. It could not be she! Impossible. Utterly impossible.

But if it had been she in the flesh—if she had in that instant actually recognised him! What then!

He huddled himself in the corner of the cab, coward that he was, and shuddered at the recollections that crowded through his mind.

Would he ever have entered that hansom if he had known that it would carry him into such exposure—and worse?

But from Jim Jannaway’s lips there fell a short bitter laugh. Was not his life made up by narrow “shaves?” Had not he been in hundreds of tight corners before, and with his wonderful tact and almost devilish cunning wriggled out of what would have meant ruin and imprisonment to any other man.

He had been a born adventurer, ever since his day as a stable-lad down at Newmarket, and he had the habit of laughing lightly at his own adventures, just as he was laughing now.

Would he have laughed, however, if he had but known how that chance encounter was to result?