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  Even the gruff voice was meek.

  ‘We gotta guy in the grounds, Boss.’

  Loftus was wondering whether the American accent was natural or assumed, but had no time to wonder long, for the door opened to reveal a short, thin man, dark, well-dressed, good-looking yet not attractive. His hair was too long, his coat too waisted, his eyes too large and brilliant. Loftus did not think it was the man whose voice he had first heard, and he was right, for this apparition spoke in a faintly supercilious and lilting voice, with a faintly foreign accent.

  ‘Bring him in, Stocker.’

  Stocker was the leader, and he stood aside for Loftus to enter, his gun much in evidence. The other thug followed Loftus into a large, square room, pleasantly furnished and creating an air of affluence similar to that of the hall.

  It was neither lounge nor study, but an admirable compromise. At one end of the room were three large leather easy chairs with velvet cushions, and a long, low divan—at the other was a desk and two filing cabinets.

  A man was sitting at the desk.

  He was tall; that Loftus judged from his broad shoulders and his height above the desk. His face was tanned, suggesting perfect health, his eyes were dark, the whites very clear. He had full, sensitive lips, and he looked faintly amused.

  ‘You’ve caught quite a big fish, Stocker.’

  Loftus was eyeing him evenly, but with eyes half-narrowed.

  ‘I think—’ the man at the desk went on, but Loftus interrupted him, taking a leap in the dark. Lewis was the owner of 4 Lester Drive, and it was possible that this man was Lewis.

  ‘Mr. Lewis, I presume,’ he said almost casually, and, while the other’s expression gave him away: ‘Do you mind if I smoke?’

  Without waiting for a reply he stepped forward and took a cigarette from an open box on the desk, putting it to his lips. The move had taken him two yards nearer Lewis, but he did not look at the man. His eyes roved for matches, and he saw a box at the other end of the desk. He stretched out and picked it up.

  Then Stocker hit him.

  Loftus was half-prepared for it, or the blow would have unsteadied him. It was aimed at his lips, and was probably intended to crush the cigarette against his mouth. He moved his head sideways, and the blow just caught his shoulders. He saw that Stocker was momentarily off his balance, and hit the man with all the power there was in him.

  He had little room for a swing, and the punch was no more than a short-arm jab, but it moved with such speed and precision that Stocker crashed back against a chair, and then sprawled over it.

  Loftus struck a match and lit his cigarette.

  For a few seconds the silence in the room was absolute. Then Lewis began to drum his fingers lightly on his desk. The man who had been with Stocker moved forward and hoisted his companion to a sitting position. Stocker had the dazed expression of a man knocked flat out; his teeth were clenched tightly, his eyelids were fluttering.

  ‘Is this man armed, Jackson?’ said Lewis.

  ‘We took his gun,’ said the second rough-neck.

  ‘Leave Stocker, and make sure,’ said Lewis.

  He had opened a drawer in his desk, and as he spoke he put a small automatic in front of him. He waited while Jackson frisked Loftus again, satisfying himself that he had no weapons.

  ‘He’s clean, boss.’

  ‘Then take Stocker away, and be ready to come up here when I ring for you,’ said Lewis.

  He watched Jackson pull Stocker from the chair, and support him to the door. Stocker’s legs would not do what he told them, and he was muttering to himself. The long-haired man stepped to the door and opened it, and the rough-necks went into the passage. When the door closed, Lewis said:

  ‘Stay by the door, Pierre.’

  The long-haired man obeyed. Loftus was conscious of the fact that his too-large, too-bright eyes were boring into his back, but he kept his own gaze firmly on Lewis, who said at last:

  ‘That was a prodigious feat of strength.’

  ‘Yes, wasn’t it?’ said Loftus. He drew easily at his cigarette, and added: ‘We may as well complete the introductions. My name is Loftus.’

  He wanted to see the effect of that bold statement, and he had considerable satisfaction. Lewis was not a man likely to show his emotions easily, but his lips parted and his eyes widened. Moreover, his right hand moved towards the gun in front of him.

  ‘How did you get here?’

  ‘I followed you from Putney,’ said Loftus.

  ‘That is untrue. No one followed me.’

  ‘Wrong in one,’ said Loftus. ‘You missed me near Roehampton, but I’d only switched off the lights. Not a pleasant drive, but an effective one.’

  ‘I see. Ingenious as well as powerful.’

  ‘Oh, a little of everything,’ said Loftus airily.

  ‘How did you get to Lester Drive?’

  ‘Come, come. You invited me there. You had Hoppermann taken there, and you arranged for others to visit you at the house—I’ve been watching it for some time, and the reports I’ve had are very comprehensive.’

  There was a moment of silence before Lewis stood up. He held the gun in his hand.

  ‘What made you think that I expected you to go to Lester Drive?’

  ‘Because I knew you weren’t likely to be so careless as the move appeared,’ said Loftus.

  ‘I don’t know why you think you are in no great danger, but obviously you aren’t perturbed. How soon do you expect help?’

  ‘Oh, just about in time, I think,’ said Loftus.

  ‘You’re wrong,’ said Lewis. ‘Whenever it comes it will be too late.’ He spoke firmly, but Loftus sensed uncertainty in him, knew that Lewis was wondering why the captive seemed so sure of himself.

  ‘Too late, too late,’ he said briskly. ‘That’s a parrot-cry I’ve heard so often that it gets tiring. Lewis, it’s time we talked seriously, and stopped this fencing.’ He paused for a moment, and his eyes were very direct. Despite the quickness of his ensuing words he chose them carefully, anxious not to say one too many or too few. ‘I propose to find out why you want Hoppermann dead, I propose also to find what part you are playing in the peculiar business of United States help. The general impression is that you, with others, are a foreign agent, but I am inclined to doubt it.’

  Lewis spoke a shade too quickly.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I think I’ll keep my reasons to myself,’ said Loftus. ‘You might think they’re half-baked.’ He grinned suddenly, almost boyishly. ‘I propose to find your motivation, and to find out who is helping you. The tie-up is between someone this side, and someone in the States, of course. It may seem a tall order, but the Department has tackled worse. The Department,’ he added carefully, ‘is a thing on which you should ponder carefully. There are a lot of agents, and I’m just one of them. The only difference is in our names. We have a record of which we’re absurdly proud—we haven’t failed yet.’

  A slight pause before the ‘we’ gave emphasis to the final sentence, as he intended. He saw Lewis’s eyes narrow, and he believed that he had made a second step towards undermining the man’s confidence.

  ‘There is plenty of time,’ said Lewis.

  ‘There is indeed. We have all the time in the world, and all the resources. You can’t beat us, Lewis. Your only chance would have been had you, or anyone else, been able to work, without discovery, until your plans were so near fruition that nothing could stop them. That hasn’t happened. I’ll repeat—you can’t beat us. From midnight to-night, unless you have been apprehended earlier, a house-to-house search has been instituted by the police, just for you. There are to be no half measures, but—’ he paused, wondering how Lewis was taking this, wondering also whether the gigantic bluff he was trying would work. He wanted one thing: time, time for the others to get here.

  ‘But what?’ Lewis gave nothing away.

  Loftus shrugged. ‘It seems to me that you can ensure your personal safety by the complete confession, implicating
all those working with you, and stating fully the motive of your actions against Hoppermann. How does that strike you as a proposition?’

  12

  The confidence of Lewis

  Loftus stepped towards an easy chair, and sat on the arm. It was so well-sprung that he swayed back a little; and then, for the first time, Pierre spoke.

  ‘Keep very still, Loftus.’ His accent was French, and Loftus, who could see him out of the corner of his eye, saw that he too held a gun. He ignored Pierre completely.

  Lewis’s fingers were drumming.

  ‘Are you serious with your proposition, Loftus?’

  ‘Quite serious.’

  ‘Have you authority for it?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Loftus promptly, and for the first time it passed through his mind that the bluff might work.

  ‘Whose authority?’

  ‘I think you’ll just have to take my word that it’s good enough,’ Loftus said.

  ‘That is hardly sufficient, Loftus. In fact I am inclined to think that you invented that proposition on the spur of the moment, to—could it be to gain time?’

  ‘Yes, of course, it could! It’s quite an idea.’ Loftus lifted a hand, palm outwards. ‘That’s the trouble with having a tortuous mind, Lewis. When a straight offer is made it is viewed with suspicion. However, there is the offer. I’ll say again, you can’t succeed. True, you might cause serious dissensions between good friends, but in the end, sense will prevail and you may find yourself imprisoned for life. Not a nice prospect.’

  Lewis drummed his fingers even harder. ‘I know the risks. You under-rate my preparedness, Loftus. You made an interesting proviso just now. You suggested that the one way in which any organisation could beat your Department was by being almost finished before anything was discovered. I am so prepared. The matter is in its final stages. In fact the final stages will be reached abroad, not here. There is nothing you can do to stop me.’

  ‘Then you must be mad,’ said Loftus blandly. ‘And somehow I don’t think that you are. Come, Lewis, your anxiety to get Hoppermann isn’t without cause. Unless he could smash your plans, you’d leave him alone.’

  Both Pierre and Lewis kept very still, and Loftus felt he had succeeded in breaking through their complacency. What was more, he had gained another twenty minutes at least; nearly an hour-and-a-half had passed since Dunster had gone to telephone.

  ‘Your imagination does you credit,’ sneered Lewis. ‘Hoppermann can possibly create a trifling delay—’

  ‘Again, that’s just too bad,’ said Loftus blandly. ‘And his daughter, of course.’

  He saw Lewis’s teeth bare, heard a sudden oath from Pierre. All at once he was aware that both men were much more dangerous, that the tension which had relaxed a little was back to its limit.

  Because of mention of Christine.

  Lewis kept his temper with an obvious effort.

  ‘Stocker was right,’ he said. ‘You talk far too freely, Loftus. I’m tired of talking to you. You have no chance at all of succeeding, and your wonderful friends’—he sneered the word—‘will be as foolish as you if they try to interfere. I will spend ten minutes in showing you, also, that I am in no personal danger.’

  He turned to the wall, and pressed a button; a section of the wall opened, revealing a mirror and a dressing-table, or something like it, built into the wall. He sat down opposite the mirror, opened a drawer and took out a box, of the square, flat kind containing theatrical make-up.

  Loftus knew the value of disguise, although he did not indulge in it himself. He realised, as he watched, that Lewis was going to make a flamboyant gesture to show the reason for his confidence—but in the next five minutes he was appalled.

  Lewis was already disguised!

  The handsome tanned complexion disappeared under the touch of a cleansing cream. The well-marked eyebrows were combed and brushed out, the sleek hair was powdered and rubbed briskly. It was all done very quickly—and although Loftus was actually watching the metamorphosis, he could not really believe it.

  Lewis was perhaps ten minutes in front of the mirror. When he had finished he seemed a much older man, his complexion pasty, even raddled. He said sharply:

  ‘Watch him, Pierre.’

  Pierre made a single comment, and Lewis pulled at a knob in the wall, so that it opened into a six-feet-high screen, self-coloured with the wall. There was a rattle of metal on metal, a rustling, and occasionally the top of Lewis’s now fluffy hair showed above the screen; his feet were visible all the time. Loftus sat quite still, lit a third cigarette, and glanced covertly at his watch.

  An hour and forty minutes had gone.

  Then the screen was folded back into the wall, and Lewis stepped into the full light of the room.

  Loftus stared.

  He saw a tall, stout man, badly dressed, with sloping shoulders and sagging stomach. Gone was the exquisitely-cut suit, upright carriage, the lean, healthy figure. This was a stranger. He moved in a slow, ungainly fashion towards the desk, very different from his earlier lithe, graceful movements.

  The explanation was simple, of course; too simple.

  This was the man.

  The other was a carefully-assumed disguise, effective because of its apparent naturalness and because there had been no reason to believe it was anything but the man’s real appearance. But this was Lewis, a big, untidy, rather dirty-looking man, with pasty face and muddy-coloured whites to his eyes—achieved, no doubt, by drops just inserted—who would never be recognised as the man from Lester Drive.

  Lewis spoke; and the change in his voice was just as definite: his accent was now guttural, faintly Central European.

  ‘You are now one of the very few men, Loftus, who has seen me as both myself and Lewis. I expect that your friends will soon be here—that is why you talked, I know. But what will they see? Me. Not Lewis. Me! I am a most harmless old man, Loftus, and am well-liked. But the drive to Conway also leads—though few know it—to the house next door. A house which will explode—and very soon, now—just like the house in Barnes. A man like Lewis has often been seen there. I will say so, Pierre will say so, my servants will say so. You understand? A clever scheme, is it not?’

  Loftus said: ‘It’s clever, yes.’

  ‘It is perfect,’ said Lewis. He stepped to the desk, and his finger touched a bell-push. He went on: ‘That is for Stocker and Jackson, or if Stocker is not well enough, another. You will be taken next door. Mrs Weston will go also. The two of you, so soon to die.’

  ‘Why the girl?’ Loftus asked casually.

  ‘Because she makes a nuisance of herself,’ said Lewis viciously, his previous buoyancy changing to sudden ill-temper. ‘She always makes trouble.’

  Loftus picked up yet another cigarette, and fumbled in the match-box for a match. His hands seemed unsteady, and the cigarette trembled a little between his lips. Before he could speak, there was a tap on the door.

  ‘Come in,’ said Lewis.

  But he spoke from the wall, and he had hidden himself behind the screen; his voice was the voice Loftus had first heard.

  The door opened, and Jackson came through, with the sleek servant—Blake of Lester Drive, although Loftus did not know that.

  Lewis spoke from behind the screen.

  ‘Take this man next door. And the woman.’

  The economy of words suggested to Loftus that Lewis was still out of temper, and he could not understand why, after a period of utter calmness and the show of such self-confidence, mention of Christine Weston should make such a difference.

  He had let his cigarette go out deliberately, and as the two men approached, warily, for Jackson would not easily forget what had happened to Stocker, he took a match from the box. This time his fingers did not fumble, he said lightly:

  ‘A last cigarette, I hope.’

  Then he struck the match.

  It did what had seemed impossible a split-second before. It rooted Jackson and Blake to the floor, it made Lewis exclaim in ala
rm, it brought another vicious French oath from Pierre. Pierre fired towards Loftus, but the bullet missed.

  The match was similar to the one he had used at Putney.

  Loftus flung it from him as soon as it started to burn, and then, his eyes closed against the glare, he moved for the door. He struck against either Jackson or Blake, he did not know which, and sent in a jab which took the man in the stomach. The dull thud of the blow, and the hollow gasp which followed, merged with the echoes of Pierre’s shot.

  Loftus reached the door.

  The brightness of the light was undimmed, and he knew it would be some minutes before any of them could focus their eyes properly. To improve his chances he struck another match and flung it towards Pierre, then groped for and found the handle of the door. He pushed it to behind him, for it opened outwards into the passage, then looked hastily up and down. The furniture in the passage was vague and blurred, but what looked like a long, wooden blanket box was not far away. He reached it, and was able to lift it, although with a considerable effort.

  He put it down, with a thud, swinging it round so that it stood lengthwise from the door, with something like a couple of feet between the end of the box and the opposite wall. Another glance about him not only showed him a heavy wooden chair, but proved that his vision was much better. He moved, and it just fitted into the gap, so that anyone trying to shift the door would find it immovable.

  Then he tried the doors along the passage. None was locked, and all the rooms were empty. He retraced his footsteps, and he was glad to hear a thudding noise against the blocked door; it suggested that there was no other exit. But he did not let himself be too sanguine; Lewis could be crafty enough to have the noise made to cover movements in another direction.

  Crossing the landing, Loftus tried the doors in the passage leading to the second flight of stairs. The thudding increased, and was only half-drowned by the noise of Loftus putting a shoulder to a door which was locked.

  He was wondering, then, whether there were other men in the house besides Stocker.