Chapter Thirteen. The Hidden Ear.

“No, Dick! A trifle farther this way,” whispered Freda Crisp, who with a piece of string had been measuring the blank wall of the sparely-furnished hotel sitting-room.

“Do you think so? I don’t,” replied a lean, well-dressed, rather striking-looking man of middle-age, who held in his hand a steel gimlet, nearly two feet in length, such as is used by electricians to bore holes through walls and floors to admit the passage of electric-lighting wires.

“Slip out and measure again,” urged the woman, who was wearing a simple blouse and a navy-blue skirt which looked rather shabby in the grey afternoon light. “It won’t do to be much out.”

The man, whom she had addressed as Dick, carefully opened the door of the room a little way, peered out into the corridor, and waited. There being no sign of anyone stirring—for hotels are usually most quiet at about half-past three in the afternoon—he slipped out. He took the string and, stooping to the floor, measured from the lintel of the door to the dividing wall of the next room.

Twice he did so, and then made a knot in the string, so that there should be no further mistake.

On creeping back to where the woman awaited him, he said:

“You were quite right, Freda. Now let’s get to work.”

So saying, he again measured the distance from the door, being on his knees the while. Then, still on his knees and taking the long gimlet, he screwed it into the plaster and worked hard until the steel slowly entered the wall, driving a small hole through it and at the same time throwing out a quantity of white dust upon the floor.

“It’s through?” he exclaimed presently, and withdrawing the tool, placed his eye to the small round hole.

“Excellent. Now we’ll take the wires through.”

Again the man, Dick Allen, opened the door noiselessly, and creeping out with a coil of twin wires, unrolled it from his hand and, as he went down the corridor, placed it beneath the edge of the strip of thick green carpet, and into a sitting-room four doors along.

He laid the two twisted wires still beneath the carpet, and carrying them behind a heavy settee, he took from his pocket what looked like a good-sized nickel-plated button. The front of it was, however, of mica, a tiny brass screw set in the centre. To it he carefully attached the fine silk-covered wires, tightening the screw securely. Then, taking a big safety-pin from his pocket, he attached the button to the back of the settee, where it was completely hidden.

The microphone-button hung there as a hidden ear in that luxuriously-furnished room.

When he returned to his companion he found that she had already driven in a tin-tack, around which she had twisted the two wires. To pass the wires beneath the door was impossible, as they would have to run over a long stretch of stone and somebody might trip over them.

Afterwards she put on her hat and fur coat, and the pair left the big Hôtel du Parc and strolled down the wide, bustling boulevard, the Rue Noailles, in that great city of commerce, Marseilles. The hotel they had left was not so large nor so popular as the great Louvre et Paix, which is perhaps one of the most cosmopolitan in all the world, but it was nevertheless well patronised. At the Louvre most travellers passing to and from India and the Far East stay the night, after landing or before embarking, so that it is an establishment with a purely cosmopolitan clientèle. But the Parc was a quieter, though very aristocratic hotel, patronised by British peers and wealthy Americans on their way to the Riviera or the East, and also by foreign potentates when landing in Europe.

The truth was that when the Moorish Minister of the Interior—the white-bearded old Moslem who had come over on an informal visit to the French President—arrived in Marseilles accommodation could not be found for him at the Louvre et Paix. So he had naturally gone to the Parc, where the best suite had been placed at his disposal by the officials at the Quai d’Orsay.

News of this had reached Dick Allen on his arrival from Nice, and Freda, posing as an English society woman, had taken another suite for the purpose of keeping observation upon the old Moorish Minister, whom his English friend Barclay had arrived in Marseilles to visit.

Already it was nearly five o’clock, so the woman Crisp and her companion strolled along to the big Café de l’Univers in the Cannebière, where they sat outside over their apéritifs, well satisfied with their preparations.

“When I dined at the Louvre et Paix last night I sat close to Barclay. The old Moor was with him, and I distinctly heard Barclay say that he would call at the Parc at nine to-night. The old Moor looks very picturesque in his native costume with his turban and his white burnous.”

“Marseilles is so cosmopolitan that one meets almost as many costumes here in the Cannebière as on the Galata Bridge at Constantinople,” laughed Freda. “Nobody here takes any notice of costume. Besides, all the Arab business men from Algeria and Tunis who come over wear the same Arab dress. In any other city they would be conspicuous, but not here.”

Dick Allen, a clever crook, by the way, who had been in many intricate little “affairs” as the accomplice of Gordon Gray, Porter, Claribut and Freda, remained silent for a moment or two.

“A Moorish costume would be a jolly good disguise one day, wouldn’t it? I’ve never thought of that before, Freda,” he said.

“Providing you knew a few words of Arabic and could speak French fairly well,” the woman answered.

“The first I could easily pick up. The second I can already do fairly well. Just a little staining of the face, hands and hair, and the transformation would be complete. I’ll remember that for the future.”

“Yes, my dear Dick. One day it might be very handy—if the police were very hot on the track. You could pose as an Algerian fruit merchant, or something of the sort, while they’d be looking for the Englishman, Dick Allen?”

Both laughed. Each had their reminiscences of being hard pressed and having to exercise their keenest wits to elude their pursuers.

“What you’ve told me about that old parson in England rather worries me,” said the man. “What can he know about Hugh?”

“Nothing, my dear Dick. Don’t worry. It’s all bluff! Leave it to Gordon. He directs everything. He wriggled out in the past, and he’ll do it again.”

“That’s all very well. But I tell you I’m not so sure. Jimmie wrote to me the other day. The butler stunt at your house at Welwyn is all very well, but the game must be blown sooner or later. Believe me, Freda, it must?”

“I know. But we’re not staying at Willowden always.”

“But Gordon has his radio-telephone there. He talked to me on it to Nice the other night.”

“Yes. But we shall clear out at a moment’s notice—when it becomes desirable, and the little local police sergeant—no, I beg his pardon, he’s fat and red-faced and goes about on a push-bike—will be left guessing why the rich tenants of the big house have gone away on holidays. We’ve departed upon lots of holidays—haven’t we, Dick? And we’ll go once more! Each holiday brings us money—one holiday more or one less—what matters? And, after all, we who live with eyes skinned on people with money deserve all we get. England has now changed. Those stay-at-home cowards of the war have all the money, and poor people like ourselves deserve to touch it, if we can manage to lead them up the garden, eh?”

And the handsome adventuress laughed merrily.

“But surely our present game is not one against war profits?” the man remarked, during a lull in the blatant café orchestra.

“No. We’re up against saving ourselves—you and I and Gordon and Jimmie. Don’t you realise that not a word must ever leak out about young Willard? Otherwise we shall all be right in the cart—jugged at once!”

“I hope old Homfray knows nothing. What can he know?”

“He may, of course, know something, Dick,” the woman said in an altered voice. “If I had known what I do now I would never have been a party to taking his son Roddy away.” She paused for a moment and looked straight at him. “We made a silly mistake—I’m certain of it. Gordon laughs at me. But Jimmie is of my opinion.”

“But can’t we close the old man’s mouth and trust to luck with his son? He’ll become an idiot.”

“Gordon is bent upon getting this concession. So are you. So let us do what we can. The installation of that delicate microphone into the old Moor’s room is a mark up to you.”

“It usually works. I’ve used it once or twice before. But let’s hope for the best—eh, Freda?”

“Yes,” laughed the handsome woman carelessly—the adventuress who was so well known each winter at Cannes or at Monte Carlo, or in summer at Aix or Deauville. In the gayer cosmopolitan world Freda Crisp was known wherever smart society congregated to enjoy itself.

The pair of crooks afterwards dined at that well-known restaurant the Basso-Brégaillon, on the Quai de la Fraternité, a place noted for its “bouillabaisse”—that thick fish soup with the laurel leaves and onions and coloured with saffron, which is the great delicacy of the city. Both Freda and her companion had been in Marseilles before upon other adventurous missions. Dick lived in Nice, and was really a secret agent for the blackmailing exploits of others concerning those who played at Monte Carlo when they were supposed to be at home attending to business or politics; or the wives of men who were detained by their affairs in Paris, New York, or London.

Mr Richard Allen lived very quietly and respectably in his little white villa on the Corniche road. He was known everywhere along the Riviera from Hyères to Mentone. That he was a wireless amateur many people also knew. But of his real and very lucrative profession of blackmail nobody ever dreamed. Yet of the women who flock to the Riviera each year who dreams that the nice amiable, middle-aged man whom one meets at hotels or at the Casino, and who may offer to dance, is a blackmailer? Ah! How many hundreds of the fair sex have in these post-war days been misled and, bemuddled by liqueurs, fallen into the clever trap laid for them by such blackguards?

Blackmailers stand around the tapis-vert on the Riviera in dozens. Nobody suspects them. But their victims are many, and their failures few. And of the vampires of the Côte d’Azur, Allen was one of the most successful—allied as he was with Gordon Gray, who, when necessity arose, supplied the sinews of war.

Soon after half-past eight they were back in the private sitting-room at the hotel, and having locked the door, Allen set to work. Upon the table was a small dispatch-case, and from it he took a flat dry battery, such as is used in flash-lamps, and a pair of wireless telephone receivers. The battery and telephones being carefully attached to the wires, the man took one of the receivers and listened. The ticking of the clock in the adjoining room, hardly discernible to anyone even a few yards away, was now distinctly audible.

No word was exchanged between the pair, for they were unaware whether anyone was already in the room.

Suddenly Allen raised his finger and motioned to his companion to take the other receiver. This she did eagerly, when she heard the rustling of a newspaper, followed by a man’s deep cough. The old Moor was already there, awaiting the Englishman.

By means of the delicate microphone-button every sound was now magnified and conveyed from His Excellency’s sitting-room to the ears of the listeners. The clock had already struck nine when presently the door opened and two men entered, greeting the Moorish Minister in French. One, who spoke French very badly, was Barclay.

The conversation which ensued, believed by the three men to be in strictest secrecy, was highly interesting to the pair of listeners four rooms away. Little did they dream that behind that soft silk-covered settee hung the tiny transmitting-button, that little contrivance by which Allen had listened to private conversations many times before, conversations which had resulted in large sums being paid to him to ensure silence.

The man who had accompanied the Englishman, Barclay, appeared from their deliberations to be the Kaid Ahmed-el-Hafid, one of the most powerful officials at Fez, and their discussion concerned the granting of the concession to prospect for precious stones in the Wad Sus valley.

“And the name in which the concession is to be granted?” inquired His Excellency huskily in French.

“The name is Roderick Charles Homfray,” said Barclay. “I have it here written down. If your Excellency will have the document drawn up and sealed, my friend the Kaid will come over and meet me here or in Paris, or even in London.”

“In London,” the Kaid suggested. “I have business there next month.”

“And it is distinctly understood that if gems be found and a company formed that I get one-eighth share?” asked the wily old Minister.

“I have already assigned that to your Excellency,” replied Barclay. “I think you and the Kaid know me well enough to trust me.”

“Of course we do, Monsieur Barclay,” declared the Minister with a laugh. “Very well. It is fixed. I will, immediately on my return, grant the concession to this Monsieur—Monsieur Homfray, and hand it to the Kaid to bring to you.” Then, after a pause, the patriarchal old Moor added in his hoarse voice: “Now that we have arrived at terms I have something here which will greatly facilitate Monsieur Homfray’s search.”

“Have you?” cried Barclay eagerly. “What’s that?”

“When you sent me word in confidence some months ago about the ancient mines in the Wad Sus, I sent a trusty agent, one Ben Chaib Benuis, there to make secret inquiry. He is one of the Touareg—the brigands of the desert—and from his fellow-marauders he discovered the exact spot where the ancient workings are situated—a spot only known to those veiled nomads. They preserve the secret from the Arabs. Indeed, here I have not only a map giving the exact spot—roughly drawn though it is, yet giving the exact measurements and direction from the oasis of Raffi—but also one of the emeralds which my agent himself discovered. You see, it is still rough and uncut, yet is it not magnificent in size?”

Both men drew deep breaths. The listeners could hear their surprise as the old Minister exhibited to them proof of the continued existence of the gems at the spot marked upon the map.

“Now,” went on the old man, “I will give you this map, Monsieur Barclay, but I will keep the emerald to repay myself for the expenses of my agent—eh? Be extremely careful of the map, and take all precautions for its safety, I beg of you. I have brought it over with me rather than trust it to others, Monsieur Barclay.”

“I thank your Excellency. It shall not leave my possession until I hand it, together with the concession, to young Homfray—who, I may say, is enthusiastic, resourceful and daring—just the go-ahead young man we require for such a hazardous venture.”

“And you will form a company in London to work the mines—eh?” the Kaid remarked.

“That is our intention. We can find the money easier in London than in Paris, I think.”

“Yes, London,” urged His Excellency. “I would prefer London. But,” he added, “be careful of that map, Monsieur Barclay! It will be of greatest use to our young friend, whom I hope one day to see in Fez. I will then introduce him to Ben Chaib, who will obtain for him a safe conduct among the Touareg because they are always dangerous for strangers.”

“Even to ourselves,” laughed the Kaid, and then added: “I will be in London on the tenth of next month. But I will write to you, Monsieur Barclay, giving you notice of my arrival.”

A quarter of an hour later the three men went forth together, while Freda, opening the door stealthily, saw their figures disappearing down the corridor. The Kaid was a tall, spare man in European clothes, but the Moorish Minister of the Interior was wearing his turban and flowing white burnous which spread about him as he walked.

“Quick!” she whispered to her companion. “Slip in and get out the wires, while I detach them on this side.”

This he did, and, save the small hole through the wall, all traces of their ingenuity were swiftly removed.