The Death Miser (Department Z Book 1) Read online

  There was no time to tell Chane of the events which had led up to his, Quinion’s, presence at the Café, and he made no comment. Chane went on:

  ‘They had started to go, and you can take it from me, James, that I was glad of it. That dressing-table was at least three sizes too small, and my legs were aching like the deuce. I saw the light go out, heard them going along the passage, and after giving them a couple of minutes, crawled out myself; and I hadn’t stretched my legs before Alleyn came back.

  ‘I hadn’t an earthly. The blighter must have had an idea that all was not well, and he made no sound as he flung open the door and switched the light on. He stared at me with those queer eyes——’

  ‘ “So,” he said, “you are not tired of investigating yet, Mr. Chane?”

  ‘You’ll grant me, Jimmy, that the circumstances were a bit trying. I said a dirty word or two and chivvied him a bit …’

  Chane stopped, as though re-living the moment of which he spoke, and Quinion, used to the ways of his friend, waited expectantly on his next words. Had he been able to see the other man he would have been astonished at Chane’s expression, which mingled horror with sheer incredulity.

  ‘And then, Jimmy, believe it or not, his eyes turned red! I saw them changing gradually—they’re a steel kind of blue-grey, ordinarily—they seemed to go white, then yellow, then red! …’

  Chane broke off, and Quinion felt a surge of triumph run through his mind. He had not been wrong! Alleyn and The Miser were actually one and the same. He had no thought to question Chane’s statement, but allowed his mind to run on his discovery. Alleyn was The Miser!

  Chane went on slowly.

  ‘There you have the whole of it, Jimmy. I couldn’t resist having a go at Alleyn, but a couple of cavemen rolled up to his support and I had the worst of it.’ He leaned back in the chair for a moment, took another mouthful of neat whisky, and sighed. ‘I wish I could slip between the blankets.’

  Quinion seemed not to have heard him. The new turn of events was of colossal importance, and he could see no certain way in which to prevent The Miser from carrying out his threat of dropping his bomb on the edifice of World Peace. Chane, although fit enough to talk, would not be able to tackle much in the way of opposition; and Quinion was between two stools. It was imperative to inform Gordon Craigie of the significance of September the twenty-fifth; and it was equally imperative to keep on the trail of The Miser in order to stop, or stand a reasonable chance of stopping, that bizarre would-be Ruler of a World Council from acting before the chief of Department ‘Z’ could move.

  On top of which there was the safety of Margaret Alleyn.

  He had striven to put all thought of the girl behind him, but it was impossible. Now that there was to be no waiting period his theory that she would be safe as a hostage was exploded. He was convinced that she was in extreme danger—and there was nothing at all that he could do to ensure her escape from The Miser and his satellites.

  He had been with Chane for about twenty minutes, which meant that it was half an hour since he had first disappeared into the hole in the floor. The Queen of the Clouds, even in her most generous moods, rarely appeared in the Café for more than thirty-five minutes, for the last ten of which she was usually standing near the spot from which she had first emerged. There was just the chance that he would be able to get back, but it was a thin one.

  Chane was standing up, moving his knees up and down gingerly. He had been massaging his arms and legs throughout the length of his story.

  ‘How does it go?’ queried Quinion anxiously.

  ‘I couldn’t walk a mile,’ returned Chane. Unable to see his friend because of the darkness, he sensed the other’s anxiety for instant action, and realized something of the urgency of the situation. He gripped Quinion’s shoulder suddenly.

  ‘Look here, Jimmy; I’m all right. Carry on as if I was outside this damned hole instead of inside it.’

  Quinion gave the ghost of a chuckle.

  ‘Don’t be a ruddy fool,’ he said briefly. ‘Take this gun—it’s ammonia, not lead—and follow me. Use it if you see anyone; or rather, if anyone gets close enough; the range is three feet. There might just be a chance of getting word to de Lorne.…’

  The larger room was still ablaze with light, and the passages equally flooded. Quinion, listening for a second outside the dressing-room of the Queen of the Clouds, satisfied himself that she was not there; a moment later he heard that flawless voice raised.

  ‘She’s still at it,’ he murmured. ‘If only we can get through.…’

  There was the sound of raised voices from behind them, followed by the lower tones of Mr. Arnold Alleyn. Footsteps echoed along the passage, and Alleyn’s voice, soft and purring but distinct, came threateningly. Only the bend in the passage saved them from being seen.

  ‘Shoot anything on sight,’ said Alleyn.

  Directly ahead of the two men was the door which led to the small chamber beneath the hole in the floor. Quinion pushed Chane inside and closed it.

  ‘Now hoist yourself on my shoulder, and when you get on top, dash over to de Lorne. He’s at the same table as we were the other evening. Tell him to get through to Victoria Nought for the raid on the Café, and to mention specially that the date is not the third, but the twenty-fifth of September. Ready.…’

  The sound of voices came clearly from the other side of the door. The men whom Alleyn had sent to look for Chane—there was little doubt but that Chane’s disappearance had been discovered—were obviously nonplussed by the closed door, and Quinion imagined that they were afraid to break in on the Queen of the Clouds. It was a question of seconds only.

  Chane, his right foot on Quinion’s linked hands, tried to hoist himself up, but stumbled. Quinion gasped, and Chane gritted his teeth for another effort. Then, without warning, the floor of the chamber in which they stood began to rise!

  Quinion released his hands and looked upwards. He knew what was happening, realizing that from the point of view of his own safety it was providential. The floor of the chamber was operated by electricity, and moved upwards and downwards to enable the Queen of the Clouds to make her dramatic entry into the Café. Both he and Chane would be able to get out—but there was no possible chance of his getting back—and The Miser, knowing that Chane had escaped, would lose no time in putting his plans into operation.

  He was working the situation out as the moving floor carried the two men upwards to safety. It would be at least half an hour before the Café of Clouds could be raided. In that time the plans which The Miser had could be acted upon. Instructions could be sent to every big country in the world, and the revolution which the World Council had engineered would have commenced on its work of destruction.…

  Quinion had little doubt of its ultimate failure, but he knew that it would be a tremendous shock to the existing order of things, and a shock from which it would take years for the world to recover. He could see in his mind’s eye the chaos into which the civilized nations would be plunged. Lawlessness would become rife, looting and pillaging would make a mad whirlpool of the baser nature of man, and the nations would be fighting for their very lives, destroying the civilization which they had helped to build.

  Quinion’s mind was in a whirl. If the Café could be raided at that moment, the whole colossal scheme could be wrecked, and the truth could be broadcast in order to counteract any efforts that the World Council did make afterwards. But in half an hour the ball would have commenced its fearful roll downhill.

  His head was on a level with the floor, and he could see hundreds of feet tapping the floor in order to swell the roar of applause for the Queen of the Clouds. Gradually he saw more of the Café; then his vision was obscured by a shimmering gown of white covered with diamante. The Queen was making her last bow to that crowd of aimless pleasure seekers.

  The heads and shoulders of the two men were above the floor, and a sudden shriek from one side of the room told Quinion that they had been seen. A moment
later he vaulted upwards.

  For the second time within three days, the Café was in tumult. The sight of Reginald Chane’s face, with that ugly gash across his forehead and the blood, cleared from his eyes and mouth but still thickly congealed about his cheeks and hair, had caused panic. Women screamed and fainted. A man cursed, a table crashed to the floor and a dozen wineglasses dropped from nerveless fingers and splintered. Someone raised a cry of police, and it was echoed and re-echoed. Peter de Lorne was running wildly towards the hole in the floor.

  The Queen of the Clouds was staring unbelievingly into the eyes of the Hon. James Quinion.

  He heard the din about him and yet failed to understand it. He heard de Lorne’s voice calling him, but continued to gaze, heedlessly, into the face of the Queen of the Clouds.

  Into the face of Margaret Alleyn!

  23

  The Hoard of Death

  QUINION stared thunderstruck into those glowing hazel eyes. He saw the sudden expression of incredulity which sprang into them and the wave of relief which swept across her face, replaced almost instantly by a fear ten times greater than any that he had seen in her before. Margaret Alleyn was terribly afraid.

  His own mind was in turmoil. The tumult in the Café was forgotten in the urgent need of knowing why the girl was here, dressed in all the regalia of the Queen of the Clouds, singing as beautifully. It was mad—mad! The other night when Margaret Alleyn had been sitting with Loder, the Queen had appeared—a great hope sprang into his mind, only to be lost as quickly as it had been found. The thought that there might have been some coincidence of amazing likeness disappeared as he realized that she had recognized him. What was she doing here? Did it mean that her disappearance from Runsey Hall had been of her own free will? Was it possible that she had been an agent of The Miser from the beginning, hoaxing him, Quinion, by her beauty and her unspoken appeal to the romantic in him? Was she—a spy—working against the powers of civilization, striving for riches which would be paid for in blood and slaughter?

  Those questions and a dozen others rushed through his mind in the space of a few seconds. He stood there, looking at her. About him confusion reigned, tables and glasses were smashing to the floor, women were screaming and men shouting; a few stouter spirits were trying to restore a semblance of order, forming a small cordon round the Queen of the Clouds and the three men who obviously knew more about the Café than any others there.

  De Lorne, almost at Quinion’s side, had felt his arm gripped suddenly and swung round. Chane, his face white beneath the horrible reddish brown of dried blood, spoke urgently.

  ‘For God’s sake let’s get out of here and call for help. Leave Jimmy to it.’

  De Lorne frowned and hesitated for a moment.

  ‘But——’

  Chane had given way beneath the strain from which he had been suffering since he had been taken from the front room of Oak Cottage. He swayed on his feet, and would have fallen but for the supporting arms of one of the cordon which surrounded the hole in the floor. The man was a sturdily-built youngster of considerable strength and a remarkable lack of curiosity. De Lorne recognized him vaguely, but could not remember his name, which he learned, afterwards, was Felton.

  ‘It’s de Lorne, isn’t it?’ asked the latter, raising an eyebrow questioningly. ‘And this looks like Reggie Chane. What to do with him?’

  De Lorne glanced towards Quinion, but the other man was too engrossed with his discovery; it was his pigeon, thought de Lorne philosophically; with Jimmy goggle-eyed and Chane knocked out it was up to him.

  ‘Get him outside,’ he said, ‘and take him to my flat—17a Gowert Mansions——’

  ‘I know it,’ said Felton.

  ‘Good. Park him there—you’ll find a man about—and forget this do until I look you up, or you can tackle me in a day or two. All right?’

  ‘Good enough,’ Felton assured him.

  ‘Chin-chin,’ said de Lorne. It was the devil of a job, of course, leaving Chane like that, but the crying need of the moment was to get out of the Café and telephone Victoria Nought. Quinion would have to look after himself.…

  Five minutes later Peter de Lorne was hurrying towards a telephone kiosk that he knew to be at the corner of the road. He did not know, until someone brought a piece of lead piping down on his head with a sickening thud, that he had been followed—and a casual wayfarer, seeing him supported between two men in evening dress, told himself that yet another gilded youth had suffered from the effects of too much liquid refreshment.

  The conversation between de Lorne and the man named Felton had not taken a minute, and at the moment when the former had begun to push his way out of the crush, Quinion had recovered from the physical paralysis which the sight of Margaret Alleyn had caused. His muscles seemed to become weak and for the first time he started to speak.

  ‘Gretta——’

  He stopped when a fresh outburst of shrieking came from the dozens of women who were still imprisoned in the Café. Men who had hitherto kept control over themselves cursed.

  Someone had switched off every light in the room!

  The sudden change from light to darkness brought the Hon. James to his senses. Swinging round he saw that no one was near him apart from Gretta—or the Queen of the Clouds—and he grunted with satisfaction. That meant that de Lorne and Chane had got away. He could safely leave the sending of a message to Gordon Craigie to them. For his part, if humanly possible, he had to get down into the rooms below the Café. No matter how speedily Craigie acted, he might yet be too late to avert the first catastrophe—for Quinion had little doubt that The Miser, seeing the hairsbreadth between success and failure, would begin his vile scheme by operating in those countries in which he knew his agents were in control, without waiting until he could stir up strife throughout the world. The flame of war would spread.…

  Quinion had been too much impressed by the intellectual powers behind the World Council to doubt the perfection of its organization. If The Miser was confident of being able to put his plans into operation several days before the original date chosen for the broadcasting of his fantastic manifestos it was certain that every minor detail of the arrangements was complete, awaiting only word from the leader. Quinion, who had spent years following the trail of men whose plans, incredible though they were, aimed at the establishment of new powers, was not sceptical of the plans of the World Council. If the scheme was once started it would be impossible to hold it back. Already in the grip of industrial unrest and economic depression, the great countries of the world would find it impossible to maintain peace. Even if the plans of The Miser to gain complete control of food and materials were frustrated, the toll of life would be enormous and the damage to civilization greater by far than that which had followed on Hitler’s equally fantastic scheme to control the world.

  Quinion hardly recognized his voice as he spoke briefly to the Queen of the Clouds.

  ‘How do you get down?’ he demanded urgently.

  In the darkness he could not see the expression in her eyes, but he could still imagine that terrible fear.

  ‘But … Jimmy …’

  One light hand rested for a moment on his arm, but a sudden movement of his whole body at the contact made her withdraw it.

  ‘We haven’t time for that,’ he said roughly. ‘I’ve got to get down … quickly!’

  Without a word she stepped a yard or two towards the automatic lift. Equally silent, Quinion went to her side and saw her small, exquisitely shaped foot press a small circle in the floor; simultaneously they began to sink downwards.

  The manner in which she had reacted to his action filled him with compunction; but he had been right when he had said that there was no time. Explanations of any kind would have to be kept until Quinion had made his effort. By exerting every atom of strength that he possessed, he put aside all thought of the woman at his side as Margaret Alleyn. As the Queen of the Clouds she could give him information that might prove invaluable—and ev
ery second counted. He gripped her arm suddenly.

  ‘There’s not a moment to spare. It’s not a question of you and I—it’s a question of thousands of lives which will be lost if The Miser gets away with it. Now—do you know what part of the place is his?’

  The grim determination in his voice brooked no denial. She answered him quickly; yet had Quinion been able to see the expression in her eyes he would have wondered at it.

  ‘Yes. Keep to the passage, without turning into any side doors. The first door that you see ahead of you is his.’

  Afterwards Quinion wondered at his unquestioning acceptance of her information. At the moment he doubted her genuineness and treated her as an ally of The Miser, yet it did not cross his mind to doubt the truth of what she told him. His mind was full of the possibilities of the next quarter of an hour. He knew that the numerical strength of The Miser’s forces was in the neighbourhood of twenty-five armed men, without reckoning the actual members of the Council; and as he thought of the odds against him he grinned ironically. From the outset it was as near hopeless as anything could be—but——

  Somehow he had to prevent The Miser from acting until Department ‘Z’ surrounded the Café and brought the odds more even.

  The lift had stopped and the Queen of the Clouds stepped into the passage. A dim light came from two wall-lamps, and Quinion was able to see the passage stretching out ahead of him. Walking quickly, they reached the door of the dressing room. Grim-faced, Quinion eyed his companion, but the softness of those hazel eyes, which looked at him with an appeal that no man could have resisted, softened his expression. Once more his fingers closed round the soft flesh of her arm.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said simply, ‘but there just isn’t time to work anything out. It’s touch-and-go whether I win or The Miser wins. I can’t take chances, and I shall have to lock you in——’

  She nodded, and, opening the door of her room took a key from a drawer in the dressing table.

  ‘It’s the only one I have,’ she said. ‘Father has one.’