CHAPTER II

ENTER MISS VERA SLADE

The two men turned about as a young girl, bareheaded, in a long ermine
coat, slipped between them and laid her hand on the door of the Lancia.
She was a dainty creature, very fashionably dressed, and little
cloth-of-silver shoes peeped out from beneath the fringe of her white
satin gown. Before they could stop her, she had pulled the car door
wide. She gave one glance inside the cabriolet; then, with a little cry,
she reeled back. Desmond Okewood caught her in his arms.

“It’s . . . it’s horrible!” she gasped. “What . . . who is that inside
my car?”

A large policeman now lumbered up, panting.

“It’s Miss Vera Slade,” he said to O’Malley, indicating the girl with a
fat thumb. “She come into the station this afternoon and reported as how
her Lancia had been stolen while she was having her lunch at the Oracle
Club in Piccadilly. After you’d left to come here,” he added, turning to
O’Malley, “the sergeant on duty noticed that the number of the missing
car was the same as that of the Lancia here—the mechanic as fetched you
reported the number, you know. So the sergeant sent round to Curzon
Street at once to get Miss Slade. And here she is . . .”

“You identify this car as yours, then?” O’Malley asked the girl.

“Of course it’s mine!” she replied with spirit. “I left it outside the
Oracle Club whilst I was lunching there to-day. When I came out, it had
disappeared. I first thought that Mr. Törnedahl had taken it . . .”

“Mr. Törnedahl?” repeated O’Malley.

“Yes. The man I had lunching with me. Towards the end of lunch he was
called away and was absent for some time—for about a quarter of an hour.
When he came back to the table, he said he had been called away urgently
on business and would I mind if he didn’t wait for coffee. And with that
he went off. I had my coffee and wrote a couple of letters, and on going
outside found that my car had gone.”

“I suppose this Mr. Törnedahl didn’t say anything about taking your car,
did he, Miss?” O’Malley asked.

“Oh, no!” she replied positively.

“Do you know why he left you at lunch?”

“A page came and said a gentleman was asking for him.”

“Who was it, do you know?”

“No!”

“And did you see Mr. Törnedahl again?”

“I didn’t expect to. He was going to Paris this evening on his way back
to Sweden.”

“I see. Now about the car. Did the club people notice anybody suspicious
hanging round?”

The girl opened her clear eyes and looked at the detective.

“They wouldn’t, you know,” she answered. “The police won’t let you leave
a car unattended in Piccadilly, so we park our cars in a side street at
the back.”

“Who is this Mr. Törnedahl?”

“He’s a timber merchant, a Swede. I met him abroad.”

“What’s he like in appearance?” Desmond asked suddenly.

“A fair man,” the girl replied, “with very blue eyes and a blond beard,
a typical Scandinavian . . .”

The two men exchanged glances.

“When did this car come in?” demanded O’Malley, excitedly, addressing
Fink.

George, the mechanic, was thrust forward. About half-past five, was his
answer to the detective’s question. A young man in a dark suit had
brought it. He seemed to be in a great hurry. He backed the cabriolet
into a place in the line and made off hastily, saying he would be back
before midnight to fetch the car away. He was a fairish sort of chap,
rather foreign-looking. He had a long scar on his cheek, high up, near
the right eye.

“Was he alone?” O’Malley asked.

“Yes!” said George.

But here Jake intervened. Coming back from tea, it appears, he had met
the young man passing under the archway. He had seen him join a man
outside and go off with him.

“What was this man like?” was O’Malley’s question.

“A biggish sort o’ chap, ’e wor,” replied the washer vaguely, “an’ went
with a bit of a limp!”

Anything more precise than this the most persistent cross-examination of
the old man failed to elicit.

There was a pause. The rain poured pitilessly down. Mournfully the
twelve strokes of midnight were hammered out from the steeple of Saint
James’s Church.

Presently Desmond turned to the girl, who was sheltering beneath Fink’s
umbrella.

“That dead man in your car,” he said diffidently, “do you recognize
him?”

The girl shuddered.

“Why, no!” she said. “How should I?”.

“I don’t want to frighten you,” the young man resumed, “but I think you
ought to look again.”

He took the policeman’s lamp and opened the car door. With awe-struck
eyes the girl approached slowly. She glanced quickly within, then turned
away her head.

“He looks so dreadful,” she said. “No, no! I don’t know him!”

“You’re quite sure?” queried the other.

“Absolutely!” said she.

O’Malley was about to speak when he felt a foot firmly press his.
Desmond Okewood was looking at him.

“I think we need not detain Miss Slade any longer,” he observed. “If one
of your men could get her a taxi . . .”

A taxi was procured and they helped her in.

“I shall hope to see you again in the morning, Miss!” said O’Malley as
he closed the door.

When the cab had rattled out of the yard, he turned to Desmond.

“Why did you tread on my foot just now?” he demanded.

“Never force an identification, O’Malley!” Desmond replied with his
winning smile.

“I see!” remarked the young detective. “Well, I must be getting back to
the station to see about having him”—he jerked his head toward the
Lancia—“removed. I want to call in at the Oracle Club on my way, late as
it is. Are you coming along with me, Major?”

Desmond Okewood laughed and shook his head.

“Not on your life!” he retorted. “I’m out of the game for good . . .”

Little did he realize when, on those jesting words, they parted, that,
on the contrary, within twenty-four hours Desmond Okewood, late of the
Secret Service, would have resumed his old career.

He slept that night at the flat in Saint James’s Street, which he had
kept on since his marriage as a _pied-à-terre_ in town. His wife, with
the Okewood son and heir, was in Lancashire on a visit to her father,
and Desmond had come up from a brief week-end with his brother, Francis,
in Essex, to resume his duties at the War Office.

At five minutes to eight on the following morning the telephone beside
his bed rang deafeningly. At eight o’clock, very cross and sleepy, he
put his ear to the burbling receiver. At a minute past eight he was
sitting bolt upright in bed, alert and eager, listening to a well-known
voice that came to him over the wire.

It was the Chief who summoned him. When the head of the Secret Service
summons, there is nothing for it but to obey. About three-quarters of an
hour later, accordingly, Desmond Okewood entered the little office,
skyed at the top of a lofty building near Whitehall, and once more saw
the strong, familiar profile silhouetted against the long window that
framed the broad panorama of river bathed in the morning sunshine.

“Mornin’, young fellow!” was the well-remembered greeting. “I’ve got a
job o’ work for you!”

“You’ll wreck the home, sir,” protested his visitor. “You know I
promised my wife when I married that I’d drop the game entirely.”

The Chief seemed to be absorbed as he vigorously polished his
tortoise-shell spectacles.

“Clubfoot’s back!” he said.

And, setting his glasses on his nose, he calmly surveyed the young man’s
face.

Clubfoot! Sometimes a mere name will instantly put time to flight and
bring one face to face with yesterday. With a pang like the fleeting
anguish of an old bad dream there flashed back into Desmond’s mind the
image of the forbidding cripple whose path he had twice crossed. The
fantastic vicissitudes of that long and perilous chase through war-bound
Germany, when he and Francis had so miraculously eluded the long reach
of Dr. Grundt to best him in the end; the thrilling duel of brains in
which he and Clubfoot had engaged in that breathless treasure hunt in
the South Seas—how visionary, how remote those adventures seemed from
this quiet room, perched high above the streets, with the noise of the
birds chirping on the roof and the dull bourdon of the traffic drifting
with the winter sunshine through the open window!

Clubfoot! The name stirred memories of high adventure in the Silent
Corps. For two years the Chief’s small and devoted body of helpers, all
picked men, had not known the Okewoods who soon after the war had
retired from the Service. From time to time Desmond had felt the tug at
the heartstrings. Now and then in his room at the War Office, in the
stay-at-home billet which the Chief had secured for him, an odd
restlessness seized him when an Intelligence report came his way and he
read that “X, a reliable agent, reports from Helsingfors,” or, “A
trustworthy observer forwards a statement from Angora . . .”

But these were vague longings that a round of golf or a brisk game of
tennis would dispel. The name of Clubfoot, however, was a definite
challenge. He felt his breath come faster, his pulse quicken, as he
glanced across the desk at the bold, strong face confronting him with an
enigmatical smile playing about the firm, rather grim mouth. He knew
then that the Chief had sent for him with a purpose and that, before the
interview was at an end, the Service would claim him once more.

“It was written,” the Chief resumed, “that you two should meet again.
Your brilliant little experiment in practical criminology last night
makes it perfectly clear to me, my dear Okewood, that you are the only
man to tackle old Clubfoot in his reincarnation . . .”

Desmond stared at the speaker.

“You don’t mean . . .?” he began, and broke off. “By George!” he
exclaimed, striking his open palm with his fist, “one of the men at the
garage said something about seeing a big lame man go off with the young
man who drove up in the stolen Lancia . . .”

“Listen to me!” said the Chief. “Three days ago a certain Mr. Gustaf
Törnedahl, a Swedish merchant . . .”

“Törnedahl?” cried Desmond.

“Wait!” ordered the Chief. “A certain Mr. Törnedahl, who rendered this
country various services of a highly confidential nature in the war,
came to see me. He was in a mortal funk. He solemnly declared that,
since his arrival in London about ten days before, two separate attempts
had been made on his life. A man had tried to knife him down at the
Docks, and, a few days later, so he assured me, a fellow in a car had
deliberately sought to run him down in Jermyn Street.

“He asked for police protection and, because I had reasons for taking
his story even more seriously than he did himself, I gave it to him. At
seven o’clock yesterday evening the plain-clothes man detailed to shadow
him was found drugged, lying halfway down the steps of the Down Street
Tube Station, which, as you know, is one of the loneliest places in
London. And shortly after midnight the Yard rings up to tell me that a
man, believed to be Törnedahl, with his beard shaved off and his hair
dyed black, had been found poisoned in a car in Pump Yard, Saint
James’s.”

“It _was_ the little lady’s friend, then?” said Desmond.

“It was. He is the fourth victim of the most amazing campaign of
vengeance directed against those who rendered our Secret Service notable
aid in the war. And in each case—mark well my words, Okewood—a
clubfooted or a lame man has lurked in the background, never very
clearly seen, never precisely identified. When Sir Wetherby Soukes, the
chemist, with whose work in detecting the German invisible inks you are
familiar, committed suicide the other day, his callers, on the afternoon
in question, included a certain Dr. Simon Nadon, stated to be a French
scientist, _who had a clubfoot_!

“Perhaps you read in the newspapers of the unexplained death of Colonel
Branxe, who did so well in the counter-espionage. Poor Branxe, you
remember, was found on the fifth green at Great Chadfold with a knife in
his back. Well, in the sand of an adjacent bunker the police discovered
the footprint of a _lame man_—you know, with one footprint turned almost
at right angles to the other. And lastly, in the inexplicable affair of
Fawcett Wilbur, who looked after our end in Rumania during the German
occupation, his companion, when he jumped in front of a train at Charing
Cross Station, was a Rumanian doctor _who was a clubfooted man_! But
every time, mark you, the shadowy figure of this lame man has simply
faded away without leaving a trace.”

He broke off, and leaning back in his big chair, scrutinized the keen
and resolute face that confronted him across the desk.

“Like all Germans, old Clubfoot is a man of method,” he went on. “He is
working upwards, Okewood. To-morrow it may be your turn, or perhaps
he’ll have a shot at your brother, Francis; and ultimately it will be
me!”

His mouth had grown very grim.

“It won’t do, my boy. We can’t take it lying down. But you realize it’s
going to be a dangerous business?”

Desmond Okewood nodded. “No clues, I take it?”

“Nothing essential!”

There was a little twinkle in the young man’s blue eye.

“That settles it!” he remarked. “If we can’t go to him, we’ll have to
bring him to us. This is my idea, sir . . .”

For two hours thereafter the Chief’s door was barred to callers and a
long list of engagements completely dislocated.

Two evenings later, Vera Slade dined with Desmond Okewood at the corner
table of the grill-room of the Nineveh Hotel, which was always reserved
for Desmond when he was in town. In a high-necked pale-green gown fresh
from Paris the girl looked most attractive. Eyebrows just aslant gave a
charming suggestion of archness to her piquant face with its dark eyes,
rather wistful mouth, and fine skin, framed in raven-black hair.
Woman-like, her spirits rose to the interest which, as she clearly saw,
she had aroused in her host. His pressure of her hand as he greeted her
had lasted just long enough to tell her that her appearance was an
undoubted success.

He had asked her to dine with him to discuss the latest developments in
the mystery of the purple cabriolet. But, as usually happens, it was not
until the coffee came that the matter actually arose. Then it was Vera
who brought it up.

“Do you know,” she said, “when I told you yesterday I would dine with
you, I’d no idea what a celebrity was to entertain me?”

Desmond, who was lighting his cigar, raised his eyebrows.

“Perhaps you haven’t seen yesterday’s _Daily Telegram_?” she said.

Desmond made a wry face.

“I’ve heard enough about it, God knows,” he remarked. “But I haven’t
actually seen the paragraph.”

“I have it here,” said Vera, and produced a cutting from her gold and
platinum bag.

“‘Sensational developments are expected,’” she read out, “‘in the case
of the mysterious stranger who poisoned himself in a Lancia car at Pump
Yard, Saint James’s. From the circumstance that Major Desmond Okewood,
one of the most successful agents of the British Intelligence in the
war, has been put in charge of the investigation, it is surmised that
the mystery has a political as well as a criminal aspect.’”

She shook her head prettily at him.

“It’s lucky you didn’t deign to take _me_ into your confidence,” she
said, “or you would have certainly declared that a woman had given you
away!”

“I’m blessed if I know where the devil this infernal rag got hold of the
news,” Desmond remarked forlornly. “I haven’t breathed a word to a soul.
As a matter of fact, I’m going out to the country this evening to talk
things over with my brother Francis . . . I want him to help me in the
inquiry. That’s why I asked you if you’d mind dining at seven. My boss
carpeted me over this infernal par and properly washed my head.
Apparently the Home Office had been on to him. Look at this, issued to
yesterday’s evening papers!”

He took out of his pocket a sheet of coarse greenish paper with a
printed heading “Press Association.” He handed it to Vera. It was marked
“Private and confidential,” and ran as follows:

Notice to Editors

The Press Association is asked by the Home Office to make a special
request to the newspapers to make no further reference to Major
Desmond Okewood’s inquiry into the Pump Yard case.

“But how thrilling!” the girl exclaimed. “Then what the _Daily Telegram_
says is right. It _is_ a political crime, then? Tell me, has the dead
man been identified?”

Through a cloud of blue smoke Desmond smiled at her.

“Once bitten, twice shy!” he said. “I’m afraid I can’t say anything
about it, Miss Slade!”

The girl made a little grimace.

“You needn’t be discreet with _me_, Major Okewood,” she said softly. She
raised her dark almond-shaped eyes and let them rest for a moment on his
face. “Won’t you trust me? Won’t you let me help you?”

Desmond looked at her doubtfully.

“It’s very difficult,” he remarked, pulling on his cigar.

“How were you going to your brother’s to-night?” she asked.

“I was going to catch the nine-ten from Liverpool Street. He lives on
the high ground above Brentwood, in Essex.”

Vera leaned across the table. With her soft white arms stretched out
before her, she made an appealing picture.

“Why not let me drive you down in the car? Then we three could talk the
whole thing over. _Do_ let me help!”

“By Jove!” exclaimed Desmond. “That’s rather an idea! But look here,
you’ll have to promise to be very discreet about it!”

“My dear!” she cried joyously, “I’ll be as mute as the silent wife.
That’s settled, then? Now I’m going to take a taxi to Curzon Street and
change my frock. I’ll be back here with the car in half an hour if
you’ll wait for me in the hall.”

The thought of a long drive through the night with such a charming girl
as Vera Slade seemed to please Desmond Okewood, for he was smiling
happily to himself as he sat in the “Nineveh” lounge awaiting her
return.

Within forty minutes the hall porter fetched him out. The purple
cabriolet stood throbbing at the door, Vera, in a _chic_ little felt
_cloche_ and a blanket coat, at the wheel. It was a damp, raw night, and
in the Mile End Road the tram-lines were so greasy that the girl,
without hesitation, turned off into a network of side streets.

“I know my way round here,” she explained. “I used to drive a car in
these parts during the war.”

But at last she slowed down, peering out of the open window at her side.

“I think I must have missed the turning just now,” she said. “This
doesn’t seem to be right!”

In front of them, through the rain-spotted driving-glass, the blank wall
of a _cul-de-sac_ was discernible. Vera stopped the car. She was busy
with the gears. Suddenly the doors on either side were plucked violently
open. Desmond caught a glimpse of the girl torn bodily out from behind
the driving-wheel, then a heavy woollen muffler fell over his face from
behind and strong arms pulled him backwards.

A voice whispered in his ear:

“Not a sound, or you’re a dead man!”

But he was unable to speak; indeed, he was almost choking with the thick
cloth that invisible hands thrust into his mouth. He felt the sharp rasp
of cords on his wrists and ankles; his eyes were blindfolded; he was
raised up; for an instant the raw night air struck chill on his cheek,
then he was thrown down unceremoniously into another car, which
immediately began to move.

For the best part of an hour, so it seemed to him, the journey lasted.
The frequent changing of gears and the many stops told him that they
were going through traffic. It meant, therefore, that they had returned
to London. Then came a halt longer than the rest. He heard the car door
open; he was once more lifted and carried upstairs, or so he judged by
the laboured breathing of his unseen bearers. He heard a key turn in a
lock; he was dropped in a chair. Then the gag was pulled out of his
mouth and the bandage removed from his eyes.

Before him, at a low desk, The Man with the Clubfoot was sitting.