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The Avenger
Edgar Wallace
Chapter 1 THE HEAD-HUNTER
CAPTAIN MIKE BRIXAN had certain mild and innocent superstitions. He believed, for example, that if he saw a green crow in a field he would certainly see another green crow before the day was out. And when, at the bookstand on Aix-la-Chapelle station, he saw and purchased a dime novel that was comprehensively entitled "Only an Extra, or the Pride of Hollywood", he was less concerned as to how this thrilling and dog-eared romance came to be on offer at half a million marks (this was in the days when marks were worth money) than as to the circumstances in which he would again hear or read the word "extras" in the sense of a supernumerary and unimportant screen actress.
The novel did not interest him at all. He read one page of superlatives and, turned for relief to the study of a Belgian time-table. He was bored, but not so bored that he could interest himself in the sensational rise of the fictitious Rosa Love from modest obscurity to a press agent and wealth.
But "extra" was a new one on Michael, and he waited for the day to bring its inevitable companion.
To say that he was uninterested in crime, that burglars were less thrilling than golf scores, and the record of murders hardly worth the reading, might convey a wrong impression to those who knew him as the cleverest agent in the Foreign Office Intelligence Department.
His official life was spent in meeting queer Continentals in obscure restaurants and, in divers roles, to learn of the undercurrents that were drifting the barques of diplomacy to unsuspected ports. He had twice roamed through Europe in the guise of an open-mouthed tourist; had canoed many hundred miles through the gorges of the Danube to discover, in little riverside beer-houses, the inward meanings of secret mobilizations. These were tasks wholly to his liking.
Therefore he was not unnaturally annoyed when he was withdrawn from Berlin at a moment when, as it seemed, the mystery of the Slovak Treaty was in a way to being solved, for he had secured, at a cost, a rough but accurate draft.
"I should have had a photograph of the actual document if you had left me another twenty-four hours," he reproached his chief, Major George Staines, when he reported himself at Whitehall next morning.
"Sony," replied that unrepentant man, "but the truth is, we've had a heart-to-heart talk with the Slovakian Prime Minister, and he has promised to behave and practically given us the text of the treaty—it was only a commercial affair. Mike, did you know Elmer?"
The Foreign Office detective sat down on the edge of the table.
"Have you brought me from Berlin to ask me that?" he demanded bitterly. "Have you taken me from my favourite café on Unter den Linden—by the way, the Germans are making small-arm ammunition by the million at a converted pencil factory in Bavaria—to discuss Elmer? He's a clerk, isn't he?"
Major Staines nodded.
"He was," he said, "in the Accountancy Department. He disappeared from view three weeks ago, and an examination of his books showed that he had been systematically stealing funds which were under his control."
Mike Brixan made a little face.
"I'm sorry to hear that," he said. "He seemed to be a fairly quiet and inoffensive man. But surely you don't want me to go after him? That is a job for Scotland Yard."
"I don't want you to go after him," said Staines slowly, "because—well, he has been found."
There was something very significant and sinister in his tone, and, before he could take the little slip of paper from the portfolio on the desk, Michael Brixan knew what was coming.
"Not the Head-Hunter?" he gasped. Even Michael knew about the Head-Hunter.
Staines nodded. "Here's the note."
He handed the typewritten slip across to his sub ordinate, and Michael read:
"You will find a box in the hedge by the railway arch at Esher. The Head-Hunter."
"The Head-Hunter!" repeated Michael mechanically, and whistled.
"We found the box, and, of course, we found the unfortunate Elmer's head, sliced neatly from his body," said Staines. "This is the twelfth head in seven years," Staines went on, "and in almost every case—in fact, in every case except two—the victim has been a fugitive from justice. Even if the treaty question had not been settled, Mike, I should have brought you back."
"But this is a police job," said the young man, troubled.
"Technically you're a policeman," interrupted his chief, "and the Foreign Secretary wishes you to take this case in hand, and he does this with the full approval of the Secretary of State, who of course controls Scotland Yard. So far, the death of Francis Elmer and the discovery of his gruesome remains have not been given out to the Press. There was such a fuss last time that the police want to keep this quiet. They have had an inquest—I guess the jury was picked, but it would be high treason to say so—and the usual verdict has been returned. The only information I can give you is that Elmer was seen by his niece a week ago in Chichester. We discovered this before the man's fate was known. The girl, Adele Leamington, is working for the Knebworth Film Corporation, which has its studio in Chichester. Old Knebworth is an American and a very good sort. The girl is a sort of super-chorus-extra, that's the word—"
Michael gasped.
"Extra! I knew that infernal word would turn up again! Go on, sir—what do you wish me to do?"
"Go along and see her," said the chief. "Here is the address."
"Is there a Mrs. Elmer?" asked Michael as he put the slip into his pocket. The other nodded.
"Yes, but she can throw no light upon the murder. She, by the way, is the only person who knows he is dead. She had not seen her husband for a month, and apparently they had been more or less separated for years. She benefits considerably by his death, for he was well insured in her favour."
Michael read again the gruesome note from the Head-Hunter.
"What is your theory about this?" he asked curiously.
"The general idea is that he is a lunatic who feels called upon to mete out punishment to defaulters. But the two exceptions disturb that theory pretty considerably."
Staines lay back in his chair, a puzzled frown on his face.
"Take the case of Willitt. His head was found on Clapham Common two years ago. Willitt was a well off man, the soul of honesty; well liked, and he had a very big balance at his bank. Crewling, the second exception, who was one of the first of the Hunter's victims, was also above suspicion, though in his case there is no doubt he was mentally unbalanced a few weeks before his death.
"The typewritten notification has invariably been typed out on the same machine. In every case you have the half-obliterated 'u', the faint 'g', and the extra ordinary alignment which the experts are unanimous in ascribing to a very old and out-of-date Kost machine. Find the man who uses that typewriter and you have probably found the murderer. But it is very unlikely that he will ever be found that way, for the police have published photographs pointing out the peculiarities of type, and I should imagine that Mr. Hunter does not use this machine except to announce the demise of his victims."
Michael Brixan went back to his flat, a little more puzzled and a little more worried by his unusual commission. He moved and had his being in the world of high politics. The finesses of diplomacy were his peculiar study, and the normal abnormalities of humanity, the thefts and murders and larcencies which occupied the attention of the constabulary, did not come into his purview.
"Bill," said he, addressing the small terrier that lay on the hearth-rug before the fireless grate of his sitting-room, "this is where I fall down. But whether I do or not, I'm going to meet an extra—ain't that grand?"
Bill wagged his tail agreeably.
Chapter 2 MR. SAMPSON LONGVALE CALLS
ADELE LEAMINGTON waited till the studio was almost empty before she came to where the white-haired man sat crouched in his canvas chair, his hands thrust into his trousers pockets, a malignant scowl on his forehead. It was not a propitious moment to approach him: nobody knew that better than she.
"Mr. Knebworth, may I speak to you?"
He looked up slowly. Ordinarily he would have risen, tor this middle-aged American in normal moments was the soul of courtesy. But just at that moment his respect for womanhood was something below zero.
His look was blank, though the director in him instinctively approved her values. She was pretty, with regular features and a mop of brown hair in which the sunshine of childhood still lingered. Her mouth firm, delicately shaped, her figure slim—perfect in many ways.
Jack had seen many beautiful extras in his career, and had passed through stages of enthusiasm and despair as he had seen them translated to the screen—pretty wooden figures without soul or expression, gauche of movement, hopeless. Too pretty to be clever, too conscious of their beauty to be natural. Dolls without intelligence or initiative—just "extras" who could wear clothes in a crowd, who could smile and dance mechanically; fit for extras and nothing else all the days of their lives.
"Well?" he asked brusquely.
"Is there a part I could play in this production, Mr. Knebworth?" she asked.
His shaven lips curled.
"Aren't you playing a part, Miss—can't remember your name—Leamington, is it?"
"I'm certainly playing—I'm one of the figures in the background," she smiled. "I don't want a big part, but I'm sure I could do better than I have done."
"I'm mighty sure you couldn't do worse than some people," he growled. "No, there's no part for you, friend. There'll be no story to shoot unless things alter. That's what!"
She was going away when he recalled her.
"Left a good home, I guess?" he said. "Thought picture-making meant a million dollars a year an' a new automobile every Thursday? Or maybe you were holding down a good job as a stenographer and got it under your toque that you'd make Hollywood feel small if you got your chance? Go back home, kid, and tell the old man that a typewriter's got a sunlight arc beaten to death as an instrument of commerce."
The girl smiled faintly.
"I didn't come into pictures because I was stage-struck, if that is what you mean, Mr. Knebworth. I came in knowing just how hard a life it might be. I have no parents."
He looked up at her curiously.
"How do you live?" he asked. "There's no money in 'extra' work—not on this lot, anyway. Might be if I was one of those billion-dollar directors who did pictures with chariot races. But I don't. My ideal picture has got five characters."
"I have a little income from my mother, and I write." said the girl.
She stopped as she saw him looking, past her to the studio entrance, and, turning her head, saw a remarkable figure standing in the doorway. At first she thought it was an actor who had made up for a film test.
The newcomer was an old man, but his great height and erect carriage would not have conveyed that impression at a distance. The tight-fitting tail-coat, the trousers strapped to his boots, the high collar and black satin stock belonged to a past age, though they were newly made. The white linen bands that showed at his wrists were goffered, his double-breasted waist coat of grey velvet was fastened by golden buttons.
He might have stepped from a family portrait of one of those dandies of the 'fifties. He held a tall hat in a gloved hand, a hat with a curly brim, and in the other a gold-topped walking-stick. The face, deeply lined, was benevolent and kind, and he seemed unconscious of his complete baldness.
Jack Knebworth was out of his chair in a second and walked toward the stranger.
"Why, Mr. Longvale, I am glad to see you—did you get my letter? I can't tell you how much obliged I am to you for the loan of your house."
Sampson Longvale of the Dower House! She remembered now. He was known in Chichester as "the old-fashioned gentleman", and once, when she was out on location, somebody had pointed out the big, rambling house, with its weed-grown garden and crumbling walls, where he lived.
"I thought I would come over and see you," said the big man.
His voice was rich and beautifully modulated. She did not remember having heard a voice quite as sweet, and she looked at the eccentric figure with a new interest.
"I can only hope that the house and grounds are suitable to your requirements. I am afraid they are in sad disorder, but I cannot afford to keep the estate in the same condition as my grandfather did."
"Just what I want, Mr. Longvale. I was afraid you might be offended when I told you—"
The old gentleman interrupted him with a soft laugh.
"No, no, I wasn't offended, I was amused. You needed a haunted house: I could even supply that quality, though I will not promise you that my family ghost will walk. The Dower House has been haunted for hundreds of years. A former occupant in a fit of frenzy murdered his daughter there, and the unhappy lady is supposed to walk. I have never seen her, though many years ago one of my servants did. Fortunately, I am relieved of that form of annoyance: I no longer keep servants in the house," he smiled, "though, if you care to stay the night, I shall be honoured to entertain five or six of your company."
Knebworth heaved a sigh of relief. He had made diligent inquiries and found that it was almost impossible to secure lodgings in the neighbourhood, and he was most anxious to take night pictures, and for one scene he particularly desired the peculiar light value which he could only obtain in the early hours of the morning.
"I'm afraid that would give you a lot of trouble, Mr. Longvale," he said. "And here and now I think we might discuss that delicate subject of—"
The old man stopped him with a gesture.
"If you are going to speak of money, please don't," he said firmly. "I am interested in cinematography; in fact, I am interested in most modern things. We old men are usually prone to decry modernity, but I find my chiefest pleasure in the study of those scientific wonders which this new age has revealed to us."
He looked at the director quizzically.
"Some day you shall take a picture of me in the one role in which I think I should have no peer—a picture of me in the role of my illustrious ancestor."
Jack Knebworth stared, half amused, half startled. It was no unusual experience to find people who wished to see themselves on the screen, but he never expected that little piece of vanity from Mr. Sampson Longvale.
"I should be glad," he said formally. "Your people were pretty well known, I guess?"
Mr. Longvale sighed.
"It is my regret that I do not come from the direct line that included Charles Henry, the most historic member of my family. He was my great-uncle. I come from the Bordeaux branch of Longvales, which has made history, sir." He shook his head regretfully.
"Are you French, Mr. Longvale?" asked Jack.
Apparently the old man did not hear him. He was staring into space. Then, with a start: "Yes, yes, we were French. My great-grandfather married an English lady whom he met in peculiar circumstances. We came to England in the days of the directorate."
Then, for the first time, he seemed aware of Adele's presence, and bowed toward her.
"I think I must go," he said, taking a huge gold watch from his fob pocket.
The girl watched them as they passed out of the hall, and presently she saw the "old-fashioned gentleman" pass the window, driving the oldest-fashioned car she had ever seen. It must have been one of the first motor-cars ever introduced into the country—a great, upstanding, cumbersome machine, that passed with a thunderous sound and at no great speed down the gravel drive out of sight.
Presently Jack Knebworth came slowly back.
"This craze for being screened certainly gets 'em—old or young," he said. "Good night, Miss—forget your name—Leamington, ain't it? Good night."
She was half-way home before she realized that the conversation that she had plucked up such courage to initiate had ended unsatisfactorily for her, and she was as far away from her small part as ever.
Chapter 3 THE NIECE
ADELE LEAMINGTON occupied a small room in a small house, and there were moments when she wished it were smaller, that she might be justified in plucking up her courage to ask from the stout and unbending Mrs. Watson, her landlady, a reduction of rent. The extras on Jack Knebworth's lot were well paid but infrequently employed; for Jack was one of those clever directors who specialized in domestic stories.
She was dressing when Mrs. Watson brought in her morning cup of tea.
"There's a young fellow been hanging round outside since I got up." said Mrs. Watson. "I saw him when I took in the milk. Very polite he was, but I told him you weren't awake."
"Did he want to see me?" asked the astonished girl.
"That's what he said," said Mrs. Watson grimly. "I asked him if he came from Knebworth, and he said no. If you want to see him, you can have the use of the parlour, though I don't like young men calling on young girls. I've never let theatrical lodgings before, and you can't be too careful. I've always had a name for respectability and I want to keep it."
Adele smiled.
"I cannot imagine anything more respectable than an early-morning caller, Mrs. Watson,' she said. She went downstairs and opened the door. The young man was standing on the side-walk with his back to her, but at the sound of the door opening he turned. He was good-looking and well-dressed, and his smile was quick and appealing.
"I hope your landlady did not bother to wake you up? I could have waited. You are Miss Adele Leamington, aren't you?"
She nodded.
"Will you come in, please?" she asked, and took him into the stuffy little front parlour, and, closing the door behind her, waited.
"I am a reporter," he said untruthfully, and her face fell.
"You've come about Uncle Francis? Is anything really wrong? They sent a detective to see me a week ago. Have they found him?"
"No, they haven't found him," he said carefully. "You knew him very well, of course, Miss Leamington?"
She shook her head.
"No, I have only seen him twice in my life. My dear father and he quarrelled before I was born, and I only saw him once after daddy died, and once before mother was taken with her fatal illness."
She heard him sigh, and sensed his relief, though why he should be relieved that her uncle was almost a stranger to her she could not fathom.
"You saw him at Chichester, though?" he said.
She nodded.
"Yes, I saw him. I was on my way to Goodwood Park—a whole party of us in a char-a-banc—and I saw him for a moment walking along the side-walk. He looked desperately ill and worried. He was just coming out of a stationer's shop when I saw him; he had a newspaper under his arm and a letter in his hand."
"Where was the store?" he asked quickly.
She gave him the address, and he jotted it down.
"You didn't see him again?"
She shook her head.
"Is anything really very badly wrong?" she asked anxiously. "I've often heard mother say that Uncle Francis was very extravagant, and a little unscrupulous. Has he been in trouble?"
"Yes," admitted Michael, "he has been in trouble, but nothing that you need worry about. You're a great film actress, aren't you?"
In spite of her anxiety she laughed.
"The only chance I have of being a great film actress is for you to say so in your paper."
"My what?" he asked, momentarily puzzled. "Oh yes, my newspaper, of course."
"I don't believe you're a reporter at all," she said with sudden suspicion.
"Indeed I am," he said glibly, and dared to pronounce the name of that widely circulated sheet upon which the sun seldom sets.
"Though I'm not a great actress, and fear I never shall be, I like to believe it is because I've never had a chance—I've a horrible suspicion that Mr. Knebworth knows instinctively that I am no good."
Mike Brixan had found a new interest in the case, an interest which, he was honest enough to confess to himself, was not dissociated from the niece of Francis Elmer. He had never met anybody quite so pretty and quite so unsophisticated and natural.
"You're going to the studio, I suppose?"
She nodded.
"I wonder if Mr. Knebworth would mind my calling to see you?"
She hesitated.
"Mr. Knebworth doesn't like callers."
"Then maybe I'll call on him," said Michael, nodding. "It doesn't matter whom I call on, does it?'
"It certainly doesn't matter to me," said the girl coldly.
"In the vulgar language of the masses," thought Mike as he strode down the street, "I have had the bird!"
His inquiries did not occupy very much of his time. He found the little news shop, and the proprietor, by good fortune, remembered the coming of Mr. Francis Elmer.
"He called for a letter, though it wasn't addressed to Elmer," said the shopkeeper. "A lot of people have their letters addressed here. I make a little extra money that way."
"Did he buy a newspaper?"
"No, sir, he did not buy a newspaper; he had one under his arm—the Morning Telegram. I remember that, because I noticed that he'd put a blue pencil mark round one of the agony advertisements on the front page, and I was wondering what it was all about. I kept a copy of that day's Morning Telegram; I've got it now."
He went into the little parlour at the back of the shop and returned with a dingy newspaper, which he laid on the counter.
"There are six there, but I don't know which one it was."
Michael examined the agony advertisements. There was one frantic message from a mother to her son, asking him to return and saying that "all would be forgiven". There was a cryptogram message, which he had not time to decipher. A third, which was obviously the notice of an assignation. The fourth was a thinly veiled advertisement for a new hair-waver, and at the fifth he stopped. It ran:
"Troubled. Final directions at address I gave you. Courage. Benefactor."
"Some 'benefactor'," said Mike Brixan. "What was he like—the man who called? Was he worried?"
"Yes, sir: he looked upset—all distracted like. He seemed like a chap who'd lost his head."
"That seems a fair description," said Mike.
Chapter 4 THE LEADING LADY
IN the studio of the Knebworth Picture Corporation the company had been waiting in its street clothes for the greater part of an hour.
Jack Knebworth sat in his conventional attitude, huddled up in his canvas chair, fingering his long chin and glaring from time to time at the clock above the studio manager's office.
It was eleven when Stella Mendoza flounced in, bringing with her the fragrance of wood violets and a small, unhappy Peke.
"Do you work to summer-time?" asked Knebworth slowly. "Or maybe you thought the call was for afternoon? You've kept fifty people waiting, Stella."
"I can't help their troubles," the said with a shrug of shoulder. "You told me you were going on location, and naturally I didn't expect there would be any hurry. I had to pack my things."
"Naturally you didn't think there was any hurry!" Jack Knebworth reckoned to have three fights a year. This was the third. The first had been with Stella, and the second had been with Stella, and the third was certainly to be with Stella.
"I wanted you to be here at ten. I've had these boys and girls waiting since a quarter of ten."
"What do you want to shoot?" she asked with an inpatient jerk of her head.
"You mostly," said Jack slowly. "Get into No. 9 outfit and don't forget to leave your pearl ear-rings off. You're supposed to be a hall-starved chorus girl. We're shooting at Griff Towers, and I told the gentleman who lent us the use of the house that I'd be through the day work by three. If you were Pauline Frederick or Norma Talmadge or Lilian Gish, you'd be worth waiting for, but Stella Mendoza has got to be on this lot by ten— and don't forget it!"
Old Jack Knebworth got up from his canvas chair and began to put on his coat with ominous deliberation, the flushed and angry girl watching him, her dark eyes blazing with injured pride and hurt vanity.
Stella had once been plain Maggie Stubbs, the daughter of a Midland grocer, and old Jack had talked to her as if she were still Maggie Stubbs and not the great film star of coruscating brilliance, idol (or her press agent lied) of the screen fans of all the world.
"All right, if you want a fuss you can have it, Knebworth. I'm going to quit—now! I think I know what is due to my position. That part's got to be rewritten to give me a chance of putting my personality over. There's too much leading man in it, anyway. People don't pay real money to see men. You don't treat me fair, Knebworth: I'm temperamental, I admit it. You can't expect a woman of my kind to be a block of wood."
"The only thing about you that's a block of wood is your head, Stella," grunted the producer, and went on, oblivious to the rising fury expressed in the girl's face, "You've had two years playing small parts in Hollywood, and you've brought nothing back to England but a line of fresh talk, and you could have gotten that out of the Sunday supplements! Temperament! That's a word that means doctors' certificates when a picture's half taken, and long rest unless your salary's put up fifty per cent. Thank God this picture isn't a quarter taken or an eighth. Quit, you mean-spirited guttersnipe—and quit as soon as you darn please!"
Boiling with rage, her lips quivering so that she could not articulate, the girl turned and flung out of the studio.
White-haired Jack Knebworth glared round at the silent company.
"This is where the miracle happens," he said sardonically. "This is where the extra girl who's left a sick mother and a mortgage at home leaps to fame in a night. If you don't know that kinder thing happens on every lot in Hollywood you're no students of fiction. Stand forth, Mary Pickford the second!"
The extras smiled, some amused, some uncomfortable, but none spoke. Adele was frozen stiff, incapable of speech.
"Modesty don't belong to this industry," old Jack sneered amiably. "Who thinks she can play 'Roselle' in this piece—because an extra's going to play the part, believe me! I'm going to show this pseudo-actress that there isn't an extra on this lot that couldn't play her head off. Somebody talked about playing a part yesterday—you!"
His forefinger pointed to Adele, and with a heart that beat tumultuously she went toward him.
"I had a camera test of you six months ago," said Jack suspiciously. "There was something wrong with her—what was it?"
He turned to his assistant. That young man scratched his head in an effort of memory.
"Ankles?" he hazarded a guess at random—a safe guess, for Knebworth had views about ankles.
"Nothing wrong with them—get out the print and let us see it."
Ten minutes later Adele sat by the old man's side in the little projection room and saw her "test" run through.
"Hair!" said Knebworth triumphantly. "I knew there was something. Don't like bobbed hair. Makes a girl too pert and sophisticated. You've grown it?" he added as the lights were switched on.
"Yes, Mr. Knebworth."
He looked at her in dispassionate admiration.
"You'll do," he said reluctantly. "See the wardrobe and get Miss Mendoza's costumes. There's one thing I'd like to tell you before you go," he said, stopping her. "You may be good and you may be bad, but, good or bad, there's no future for you—so don't get heated up. The only woman who's got any chance in England is the producer's wife, and I'll never marry you if you go down on your knees to me, That's the only kind of star they know in English films—the producer's wife; and unless you're that, you haven't—!"
He snapped his finger.
"I'll give you a word of advice, kid. If you make good in this picture, link yourself up with one of those cute English directors that set three flats and a pot of palms and call it a drawing-room! Give Miss What's-her-name the script, Harry. Say—go out somewhere quiet and study it, will you? Harry, you see the wardrobe. I give you half an hour to read that script!"
Like one in a dream the girl walked out into the shady garden that ran the length of the studio building and sat down, trying to concentrate on the type written lines. It wasn't true—it could not be true! And then she heard the crunch of feet on gravel and looked up in alarm. It was the young man who had seen her that morning—Michael Brixan.
"Oh, please—you mustn't interrupt me!" she begged in agitation. "I've got a part—a big part—to read."
Her distress was so real that he hastened to take his departure.
"I'm awfully sorry—" he began
In her confusion she had dropped the loose sheets of the manuscript, and, stooping with her to pick them up, their heads bumped.
"Sorry—that's an old comedy situation, isn't it?" he began.
And then he saw the sheet of paper in his hand and began to read. It was a page of elaborate description of a scene.
The cell is large, lighted by a swinging lamp. In centre is a steel gate through which a soldier on guard is seen pacing to and fro—
"Good God!" said Michael, and went white. The 'u's in the the type were blurred, the 'g' was indistinct. The page had been typed on the machine from which the Head-Hunter sent forth his gruesome tales of death.
Chapter 5 MR. LAWLEY FOSS
"WHAT is wrong?" asked Adele, seeing the young man's grave face.
"Where did this come from?" He showed her the sheet of typewritten script.
"I don't know: it was with the other sheets. I knew, of course, that it didn't belong to 'Roselle'."
"Is that the play you're acting in?" he asked quickly. And then: "Who would know?"
"Mr. Knebworth."
"Where shall I find him?"
"You go through that door," she said, "and you will find him on the studio floor."
Without a word, he walked quickly into the building. Instinctively he knew which of the party was the man he sought. Jack Knebworth looked up under lowering brows at the sight of the stranger, for he was a stickler for privacy in business hours; but before he could demand an explanation Michael was up to him.
"Are you Mr. Knebworth?" Jack nodded.
"I surely am," he said.
"May I speak to you for two minutes?"
"I can't speak to anybody for one minute," growled Jack. "Who are you, anyway, and who let you in?"
"I am a detective from the Foreign Office," said Michael lowering his voice, and Jack's manner changed.
"Anything wrong?" he asked, as he accompanied the detective into his sanctum.
Jack laid down the sheet of paper with its typed characters on the table.
"Who wrote that?" he asked.
Jack Knebworth looked at the manuscript and shook his head.
"I've never seen it before. 'What is it all about?"
"You've never seen this manuscript at all?"
"No, I'll swear to that, but I dare say my scenario-man will know all about it. I'll send for him."
He touched a bell, and, to the clerk who came: "Mr. Lawley Foss to come quickly," he said.
"The reading of books, plots and material for picture plays is entirely in the hands of my scenario manager," he said. "I never see a manuscript until he considers it's worth producing; and even then, of course, the picture isn't always made. If the story happens to be a bad one, I don't see it at all. I'm not so sure that I haven't lost some good stories, because Foss "—he hesitated a second—"well, he and I don't see exactly eye to eye. Now, Mr. Brixan, what is the trouble?"
In a few words Michael explained the grave significance of the typewritten sheet.
"The Head-Hunter!" Jack whistled.
There came a knock at the door, and Lawley Foss slipped into the room. He was a thinnish man, dark and saturnine of face, shifty of eye. His face was heavily lined as though he suffered from some chronic disease. But the real disease which preyed on Lawley Foss was the bitterness of mind that comes to a man it war with the world. There had been a time in his early life when he thought that same world was at his feet. He had written two plays that had been produced and had run a few nights. Thereafter, he had trudged from theatre to theatre in vain, for the taint of failure was on him, and no manager would so much as open the brown-covered manuscripts he brought to them. Like many another man, he had sought easy ways to wealth, but the Stock Exchange and the race track had impoverished him still further.
He glanced suspiciously at Michael as he entered.
"I want to see you, Foss, about a sheet of script that's got amongst the 'Roselle' script," said Jack Knebworth. "May I tell Mr. Foss what you have told me?"
Michael hesitated for a second. Some cautioning voice warned him to keep the question of the Head Hunter a secret. Against his better judgment he nodded.
Lawley Foss listened with an expressionless face whilst the old director explained the significance of the interpolated sheet; then he took the page from Jack Kenilworth's hand and examined it. Not by a twitch of his face or a droop of his eyelid did he betray his thoughts.
"We get a lot of stuff in," he said, "and I can't immediately place this particular play; but if you'll let me take it to my office, I will look up my books."
Again Michael considered. He did not wish that piece of evidence to pass out of his hands; and yet, without confirmation and examination, it was fairly valueless. He reluctantly agreed.
"What do you make of that fellow?" asked Jack Knebworth when the door had dosed upon the writer.
"I don't like him," said Michael bluntly. "In fact, my first impressions are distinctly unfavourable, though I am probably doing the poor gentleman a very great injustice."
Jack Knebworth sighed. Foss was one of his biggest troubles, sometimes bulking larger than the temperamental Mendoza.
"He certainly is a queer chap," he said, "though he's diabolically clever. I never knew a man who could take a plot and twist it as Lawley Foss can—but he's—difficult."
"I should imagine so," said Michael dryly.
They passed out into the studio and Michael sought the troubled girl to explain his crudeness. There were tears of vexation in her eyes when he approached her for his startling disappearance with a page of the script had put all thoughts of the play from her mind.
"I am sorry," he said penitently. "I almost wish I hadn't come."
"And I quite wish it," she said, smiling in spite of herself. "What was the matter with that page you took—you are a detective, aren't you?"
"I admit it," said Michael recklessly.
"Did you speak the truth when you said that my uncle—" She stopped, at a loss for words.
"No, I did not," replied Michael quietly. "Your uncle is dead, Miss Leamington."
"Dead!" she gasped.
He nodded.
"He was murdered, in extraordinary circumstances."
Suddenly her face went white.
"He wasn't the man whose head was found at Esher?"
"How did you know?" he asked sharply.
"It was in this morning's newspaper," she said, and inwardly he cursed the sleuth-hound of a reporter who had got on to the track of this latest tragedy.
She had to know sooner or later: he satisfied himself with that thought.
The return of Foss relieved him of further explanations. The man spoke for a while with Jack Knebworth in a low voice, and then the director beckoned Michael across.
"Foss can't trace this manuscript." he said, handing Jack the sheet. "It may have been a sample page sent in by a contributor, or it may have been a legacy from our predecessors. I took over a whole lot of manuscript with the studio from a bankrupt production company."
He looked impatiently at his watch.
"Now, Mr. Brixan, if it's possible I should be glad if you would excuse me. I've got some scenes to shoot ten miles away, with a leading lady from whose little head you've scared every idea that will be of the slightest value to me."
Michael acted upon an impulse.
"Would you mind my coming out with you to shoot—that means to photograph, doesn't it? I promise you I won't be in the way."
Old Jack nodded curtly, and ten minutes later Michael Brixan was sitting side by side with the girl in a char-à-banc which was carrying them to the location. That he should be riding with the artistes at all was a tribute to his nerve rather than to his modesty.
Chapter 6 THE MASTER OF GRIFF
ADELE did not speak to him for a long time. Resentment that he should force his company upon her, and nervousness at the coming ordeal—a nervousness which became sheer panic as they drew nearer and nearer to their destination—made conversation impossible.
"I see your Mr. Lawley Foss is with us," said Michael, glancing over his shoulder, and by way of making conversation.
"He always goes on location," she said shortly. "A story has sometimes to be amended while it's being shot."
"Where are we going now?" he asked.
"Griff Towers first," she replied. She found it difficult to be uncivil to anybody. "It is a big place owned by Sir Gregory Penne."
"But I thought we were going to the Dower House?"
She looked at him with a little frown.
"Why did you ask if you knew?" she demanded, almost in a tone of asperity.
"Because I like to hear you speak," said the young man calmly. "Sir Gregory Penne? I seem to know the name."
She did not answer.
"He was in Borneo for many years, wasn't he?"
"He's hateful," she said vehemently. "I detest him!" She did not explain the cause of her detestation, and Michael thought it discreet not to press the question, but presently she relieved him of responsibility.
"I've been to his house twice. He has a very fine garden, which Mr. Knebworth has used before—of course, I only went as an extra and was very much in the background. I wish I had been more so. He has queer ideas about women, and especially actresses—not that I'm an actress," she added hastily, "but I mean people who play for a living. Thank heaven there's only one scene to be shot at Griff, and perhaps he will not be at home, but that's unlikely. He's always there when I go."
Michael glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. His first impression of her beauty was more than confirmed. There was a certain wistfulness in her face which was very appealing; an honesty in the dark eyes that told him all he wanted to know about her attitude toward the admiration of the unknown Sir Gregory.
"It's queer how all baronets are villains in stories," he said, "and queerer still that most of the baronets I've known have been men of singular morals. I'm bothering you, being here, aren't I?" he asked, dropping his tone of banter.
She looked round at him.
"You are a little," she said frankly. "You see, Mr. Brixan, this is my big chance. It's a chance that really never comes to an extra except in stories, and I'm frightened to death of what is going to happen. You make me nervous, but what makes me more panic-stricken is that the first scene is to be shot at Griff. I hate it! I hate it!" she said almost savagely. "big, hard-looking house, with its hideous stuffed tigers and its awful-looking swords—"
"Swords?" he asked quickly. "What do you mean?"
"The walls are covered with them—Eastern swords. They make me shiver to see them. But Sir Gregory takes a delight in them. He told Mr. Knebworth, the last time we were there, that the swords were as sharp now as they were when they came from the hands of their makers, and some of them were three hundred years old. He's an extraordinary man: he can cut an apple in half on your hand and never so much as scratch you. That is one of his favourite stunts—do you know what 'stunt' means?"
"I seem to have heard the expression," said Michael absently.
"There is the house," she pointed. "Ugh! It makes me shiver."
Griff Towers was one of those bleak-looking buildings that it had been the delight of the early Victorian architects to erect. Its one grey tower, placed on the left wing, gave it a lop-sided appearance, but even this distortion did not distract attention from its rectangular unloveliness. The place seemed all the more bare since the walls were innocent of greenery and it stood starkly in the midst of a yellow expanse of gravel.
"Looks almost like a barracks," said Michael, "with a parade ground in front!"
They passed through the lodge gates, and the char-à-banc stopped half-way up the drive. The gardens apparently were in the rear of the building, and certainly there was nothing that would attract the most careless of directors in its uninteresting façade.
Michael got down from his seat and found Jack Knebworth already superintending the unloading of a camera and reflectors. Behind the char-a-banc came the big dynamo lorry, with three sun arcs that were to enhance the value of daylight.
"Oh, you're here, are you?" growled Jack. "Now you'll oblige me, Mr. Brixan, by not getting in the way. I've got a hard morning's work ahead of me."
"I want you to take me on as a—what is the word?—extra," said Michael.
The old man frowned at him.
"Say, what's the great idea?" he asked suspiciously.
"I have an excellent reason, and I promise you that nothing I do will in any way embarrass you. The truth is, Mr. Knebworth, I want to be around for the remainder of the day, and I need an excuse."
Jack Knebworth bit his lip, scratched his long chin, scowled, and then:
"All right," he said gruffly. "Maybe you'll come in handy, though I'll have quite enough bother directing one amateur, and if you get into the pictures on this trip you're going to be lucky!"
There was a man of the party, a tall young man whose hair was brushed back from his forehead, and was so tidy and well arranged that it seemed as if it had originally been stuck by glue and varnished over. A tail, somewhat good-looking boy, who had sat on Adele's left throughout the journey and had not spoken once. He raised his eyebrows at the appearance of Michael, and, strolling across to the harassed Knebworth, his hands in his pockets, he asked with a hurt air:
"I say, Mr. Knebworth, who is this johnny?"
"Which johnny?" growled old Jack. "You mean Brixan? He's an extra."
"Oh, an extra, is he?" said the young man. "I say, it's pretty desperately awful when extras hobnob with principals! And this Leamington girl—she's simply going to mess up the pictures. She is, by Jove!"
"Is she, by Jove?" snarled Knebworth. "Now see here, Mr. Connolly, I ain't so much in love with your work that I'm willing to admit in advance that even an extra is going to mess up this picture."
"I've never played opposite to an extra in my life, dash it all!"
"Then you must have felt lonely," grunted Jack, busy with his packing.
"Now, Mendoza is an artiste—" began the youthful leading man, and Jack Knebworth straightened his back.
"Get over there till you're wanted, you!" he roared. "When I need advice from pretty boys, I'll come to you—see? For the moment you're de trop, which is a French expression meaning that you're standing on ground there's a better use for."
The disgruntled Reggie Connolly strolled away with a shrug of his thin shoulders, which indicated not only his conviction that the picture would fail, but that the responsibility was everywhere but under his hat.
From the big doorway of Grill Towers, Sir Gregory Penne was watching the assembly of the company. He was a thick-set man, and the sun of Borneo and an unrestricted appetite had dyed his skin a colour which was between purple and brown. His face was covered with innumerable ridges, his eyes looked forth upon the world through two narrow slits. The rounded feminine chin seemed to be the only part of his face that sunshine and stronger stimulants had left in its natural condition.
Michael watched him as he strolled down the slope to where they were standing, guessing his identity. He wore a golf suit of a loud check in which red predominated, and a big cap of the same material was pulled down over his eyes. Taking the stub of a cigar from his teeth, with a quick and characteristic gesture he wiped his scanty moustache on his knuckles.
"Good morning, Knebworth," he called.
His voice was harsh and cruel: a voice that had never been mellowed by laughter or made soft by the tendernesses of humanity.
"Good morning. Sir Gregory."
Old Knebworth disentangled himself from his company.
"Sorry I'm late."
"Don't apologize," said the other. "Only I thought you were going to shoot earlier. Brought my little girl, eh?"
"Your little girl?" Jack looked at him, frankly nonplussed. "You mean Mendoza? No, she's not coming."
"I don't mean Mendoza, if that's the dark girl. Never mind: I was only joking."
Who the blazes was his little girl? thought Jack, who was ignorant of two unhappy experiences which an unconsidered extra girl had had on previous visits. The mystery, however, was soon cleared up, for the baronet walked slowly to where Adele Leamington was making a pretence of studying her script.
"Good morning, little lady," he said, lifting his cap an eighth of an inch from his head.
"Good morning, Sir Gregory," she said coldly.
"You didn't keep your promise." He shook his head waggishly. "Oh, woman, woman!"
"I don't remember having made a promise," said the girl quietly. "You asked me to come to dinner with you, and I told you that that was impossible."
"I promised to send my car for you. Don't say it was too far away. Never mind, never mind." And, to Michael's wrath, he squeezed the girl's arm in a manner which was intended to be paternal, but which filled the girl with indignant loathing.
She wrenched her arm free, and, turning her back upon her tormentor, almost flew to Jack Knebworth with an incoherent demand for information on the reading of a line which was perfectly simple.
Old Jack was no fool. He watched the play from under his eyelids, recognizing all the symptoms.
"This is the last time we shall shoot at Griff Towers," he told himself.
For Jack Knebworth was something of a stickler on behaviour, and had views on women which were diametrically opposite to those held by Sir Gregory Penne.
Chapter 7 THE SWORDS AND BHAG
THE little party moved away, leaving Michael alone with the baronet. For a period, Gregory Penne watched the girl, his eyes glittering; then he became aware of Michael's presence and turned a cold, insolent stare upon the other.
"What are you?" he asked, looking the detective up and down.
"I'm an extra," said Michael.
"An extra, eh? Sort of chorus boy? Put paint and powder on your face and all that sort of thing? What a life for a man!"
"There are worse," said Michael, holding his antagonism in check.
"Do you know that little girl—what's her name. Leamington?" asked the baronet suddenly.
"I know her extremely well," said Michael untruthfully.
"Oh, you do, eh?" said the master of Griff Towers with sudden amiability. "She's a nice little thing. Quite a cut above the ordinary chorus girl. You might bring her along to dinner one night. She'd come with you, eh?"
The contortions of the puffy eyelids suggested to Michael that the man had winked. There was some thing about this gross figure that interested the scientist in Michael Brixan. He was elemental; an animal invested with a brain; and yet he must be something more than that if he had held a high administrative position under Government.
"Are you acting? If you're not, you can come up and have a look at my swords," said the man suddenly.
Michael guessed that, for a reason of his own, probably because of his claim to be Adele's friend, the man wished to cultivate the acquaintance.
"No, I'm not acting," replied Michael.
And no invitation could have given him greater pleasure. Did their owner realize the fact, Michael Brixan had already made up his mind not to leave Griff Towers until he had inspected that peculiar collection.
"Yes, she's a nice little girl."
Penne returned to the subject immediately as they paced up the slope toward the house.
"As I say, a cut above chorus girls. Young, unsophisticated, virginal! You can have your sophisticated girls: there is no mystery to 'em! They revolt me. A girl should be like a spring flower. Give me the violet and the snowdrop: you can have a bushel of cabbage roses for one petal of the shy dears of the forest."
Michael listened with a keen sense of nausea, and yet with an unusual interest, as the man rambled on. He said things which were sickening, monstrous. There were moments when Brixan found it difficult to keep his hands off the obscene figure that paced at his side; and only by adopting toward him the attitude with which the enthusiastic naturalist employs in his dealings with snakes was he able to get a grip of himself.
The big entrance hall into which he was ushered was paved with earthen tiles, and, looking up at the stone walls, Michael had his first glimpse of the famous swords.
There were hundreds of them—poniards, scimitars, ancient words of Japan, basket-hilted hangers, two-handed swords that had felt the grip of long-dead Crusaders.
"What do you think of 'em, eh?" Sir Gregory Penne spoke with the pride of an enthusiastic collector. "There isn't one of them that could be duplicated, my boy; and they're only the rag, tag and bobtail of my collection."
He led his visitor along a broad corridor, lighted by square windows set at intervals, and here again the walls were covered with shining weapons. Throwing open a door, Sir Gregory ushered the other into a large room which was evidently his library, though the books were few, and, so far as Michael could see at first glance, the conventional volumes that are to be found in the houses of the country gentry.
Over the mantelshelf were two great swords of a pattern which Michael did not remember having seen before.
"What do you think of those?"
Penne lifted one from the silver hook which supported it, and drew it from its scabbard.
"Don't feel the edge unless you want to cut yourself. This would split a hair, but it would also cut you in two, and you would never know what had happened till you fell apart!"
Suddenly his manner changed, and he almost snatched the sword from Michael's hand, and, putting it back in its sheath, he hung it up.
"That is a Sumatran sword, isn't it?"
"It comes from Borneo," said the baronet shortly.
"The home of the head-hunters."
Sir Gregory looked round, his brows lowered.
"No," he said, "it comes from Dutch Borneo."
Evidently there was something about this weapon which aroused unpleasant memories. He glowered for a long time in silence into the little fire that was burning on the hearth.
"I killed the man who owned that," he said at last, and it struck Michael that he was speaking more to himself than to his visitor. "At least, I hope I killed him. I hope so!"
He glanced round, and Michael Brixan could have sworn there was apprehension in his eyes.
"Sit down, What's-your-name," he commanded, pointing to a low settee. "We'll have a think."
He pushed a bell, and, to Michael's astonishment, the summons was answered by an undersized native, a little copper-coloured man, naked to the waist. Gregory gave an order in a language which was unintelligible to Michael—he guessed, by its sibilants, it was Malayan—and the servant, with a quick salaam, disappeared, and came back almost instantly with a tray containing a large decanter and two thin glasses.
"I have no white servants—can't stand 'em," said Penne, taking the contents of his glass at a gulp. "I like servants who don't steal and don't gossip. You can lick 'em if they misbehave, and there's no trouble. I got this fellow last year in Sumatra, and he's the best butler I've had."
"Do you go to Borneo every year?" asked Michael.
"I go almost every year," said the other. "I've got a yacht: she's lying at Southampton now. If I didn't get out of this cursed country once a year I'd go mad. There's nothing here, nothing! Have you ever met that dithering old fool Longvale? Knebworth said you were going on to him— pompous old ass, who lives in the past and dresses like an advertisement for somebody's whisky. Have another?"
"I haven't finished this yet," said Michael with a smile, and his eyes went up to the sword above the mantelpiece. "Have you had that very long? It looks modern."
"It isn't," snapped the other. "Modern! It's three hundred years old if it's a day, I've only had it a year." Again he changed the subject abruptly. "I like you, What's-your-name. I like people or I dislike them instantly. You're the sort of fellow who'd do well in the East. I've made two millions there. The East is full of wonder, full of unbelievable things." He screwed his head round and fixed Michael with a glittering eye. "Full of good servants," he said slowly. "Would you like to meet the perfect servant?"
There was something peculiar in his tone, and Michael nodded.
"Would you like to see the slave who never asks questions and never disobeys, who has no love but love of me"—he thumped himself on the chest—"no hate but for the people I hate—my trusty—Bhag?"
He rose, and, crossing to his table, turned a little switch that Michael had noticed attached to the side of the desk. As he did so, a part of the panelled wall at the farther end of the room swung open. For a second Michael saw nothing, and then there emerged, blinking into the daylight, a most sinister, a most terrifying figure. And Michael Brixan had need for all his self-control to check the exclamation that rose to his lips.
Chapter 8 BHAG
IT was a great orang-outang. Crouched as it was, gazing malignantly upon the visitor with its bead-like eyes, it stood over six feet in height. The hairy chest was enormous; the arms that almost touched the floor were as thick as an average man's thigh. It wore a pair of workman's dark-blue overalls, held in place by two straps that crossed the broad shoulders.
"Bhag." called Sir Gregory in a voice so soft that Michael could not believe it was the man's own, "come here."
The gigantic figure waddled across the room to where they stood before the fireplace.
"This is a friend of mine, Bhag."
The great ape held out his hand, and for a second Michael's was held in its velvet palm. This done, he lifted his paw to his nose and sniffed loudly, the only sound he made.
"Get me some cigars," said Penne.
Immediately the ape walked to a cabinet, pulled open a drawer, and brought out a box.
"Not those," said Gregory. "The small ones."
He spoke distinctly, as if he were articulating to somebody who was deaf, and, without a moment's hesitation, the hideous Bhag replaced the box and brought out another.
"Pour me out a whisky-and-soda."
The ape obeyed. He di& not spill a drop, and when his owner said "Enough", replaced the stopper in the decanter and put it back.
"Thank you, that will do, Bhag."
Without a sound the ape waddled back to the open panelling and disappeared, and the door closed behind him.
"Why, the thing is human!" said Michael in an awe-stricken whisper.
Sir Gregory Penne chuckled.
"More than human," he said. "Bhag is my shield against all trouble."
His eyes seemed to go instantly to the sword above the mantelpiece.
"Where does he live?"
"He's got a little apartment of his own, and he keeps it clean. He feeds with the servants."
"Good lord!" gasped Michael, and the other chuckled again at the surprise he had aroused.
"Yes, he feeds with the servants. They're afraid of him, but they worship him: he's a soft of god to them, but they're afraid of him. Do you know what would have happened if I'd said, 'This man is my enemy'?" He pointed his stubby finger at Michael's chest. "He would have torn you limb from limb. You wouldn't have had a chance, Mr. What's-your-name, not a dog's chance. And yet he can be gentle—yes, he can be gentle." He nodded. "And cunning! He goes out almost every night, and I've had no complaints from the villagers. No sheep stolen, nobody frightened. He just goes out and loafs around in the woods, and doesn't kill as much as a hen partridge."
"How long have you had him?"
"Eight or nine years," said the baronet carelessly, swallowing the whisky that the ape had poured for him. "Now let's go out and see the actors and actresses. She's a nice girl, eh? You're not forgetting you're going to bring her to dinner, are you? What is your name?"
"Brixan," said Michael. "Michael Brixan."
Sir Gregory grunted something.
"I'll remember that—Brixan. I ought to have told Bhag. He likes to know."
"Would he have known me again, suppose you had?" asked Michael, smiling.
"Known you?" said the baronet contemptuously. "He will not only know you, but he'll be able to trail you down. Notice him smelling his hand? He was filing you for reference, my boy. If I told him, 'Go along and take this message to Brixan', he'd find you."
When they reached the lovely gardens at the back of the house the first scene had been shot, and there was a smile on Jack Knebworth's face which suggested that Adele's misgivings had not been justified. And so it proved.
"That girl's a peach," Jack unbent to say. "A natural-born actress, built for this scene—it's almost too good to be true. What do you want?"
It was Mr. Reggie Connolly, and he had the obsession which is perpetual in every leading man. He felt that sufficient opportunities had not been offered to him.
"I say, Mr. Knebworth," he said in a grieved tone, "I'm not getting much of the fat in this story! So far, there's about thirty feet of me in this picture. I say, that's not right, you know! If a johnny is being featured—"
"You're not being featured," said Jack shortly, "And Mendoza's chief complaint was that there was too much of you in it."
Michael looked round. Sir Gregory Penne had strolled toward where the girl was standing, and, in her state of elation, she had no room in her heart even for resentment against the man she so cordially detested.
"Little girl, I want to speak to you before you go," he said, dropping his voice, and for once she smiled at him.
"Well, you have a good opportunity now, Sir Gregory," she said.
"I want to tell you how sorry I am for what happened the other day, and I respect you for what you said, for a girl's entitled to keep her kisses for men she likes. Aren't I right?"
"Of course you're right," she said. "Please don't think any more about it, Sir Gregory."
"I'd no right to kiss you against your will, especially when you're in my house. Are you going to forgive me?"
"I do forgive you," she said, and would have left him, but he caught her arm.
"You're coming to dinner, aren't you?" He jerked his head toward the watchful Michael. "Your friend said he'd bring you along."
"Which friend?" she asked, her eyebrows raised. "You mean Mr. Brixan?"
"That's the fellow. Why with that kind of man? Not fellow. I like him personally to dinner?"
"I'm afraid I can't," she said, her old aversion gaining ground.
"Little girl," he said earnestly, "there's nothing you couldn't have from me. Why do you want to trouble your pretty head about this cheap play-acting? I'll give you a company of your own if you want it, and the best car that money can buy."
His eyes were like points of fire, and she shivered.
"I have all I want, Sir Gregory," she said.
She was furious with Michael Brixan. How dared he presume to accept an invitation on her behalf? How dare he call himself her friend? Her anger almost smothered her dislike for her persecutor.
"You come over tonight—let him bring you," said Penne huskily. "I want you tonight—do you hear? You're staying at old Longvale's. You can easily slip out."
"I'll do nothing of the kind. I don't think you know what you're asking, Sir Gregory," she said quietly. "Whatever you mean, it is an insult to me."
Turning abruptly, she left him. Michael would have spoken to her, but she passed, her head in the air, a look on her face which dismayed him, though, after a moment's consideration, he could guess the cause.
When the various apparatus was packed, and the company had taken their seats in the char-à-banc, Michael observed that she had very carefully placed herself between Jack Knebworth and the sulking leading man, and wisely himself chose a seat some distance from her.
The car was about to start when Sir Gregory came up to him, and, stepping on the running-board:
"You said you'd get her over—" he began.
"If I said that," said Michael, "I must have been drunk, and it takes more than one glass of whisky to reduce me to that disgusting condition. Miss Leamington is a free agent, and she would be singularly ill-advised to dine alone with you or any other man."
He expected an angry outburst, but, to his surprise, the squat man only laughed and waved him a pleasant farewell. Looking round as the car turned from the lodge gates, Michael saw him standing on the lawn, talking to a man, and recognized Foss, who, for some reason, had stayed behind.
And then his eyes strayed past the two men to the window of the library, where the monstrous Bhag sat in his darkened room, waiting for instructions which he would carry into effect without reason or pity. Michael Brixan, hardened as he was to danger of every variety, found himself shuddering.
Chapter 9 THE ANCESTOR
The Dower House was away from the main road. A sprawling mass of low buildings, it stood behind untidy hedges and crumbling walls. Once the place had enjoyed the services of a lodge-keeper, but the tiny lodge was deserted, the windows broken, and there were gaps in the tiled roof. The gates had not been closed for generations; they were broken, and leant crazily against the walls to which they had been thrust by the last person who had employed them to guard the entrance to the Dower House.
What had once been a fair lawn was now a tangle of weeds. Thistle and mayweed grew knee-deep where the gallants of old had played their bowls; and it was clear to Michael, from his one glance, that only a portion of the house was used. In only one of the wings were the windows whole; the others were broken or so grimed with dirt that they appeared to have been painted.
His amusement blended with curiosity, Michael saw for the first time the picturesque Mr. Sampson Longvale. He came out to meet them, his bald head glistening in the afternoon sunlight, his strapped fawn-coloured trousers, velvet waistcoat and old-fashioned stock completely supporting Gregory Penne's description of him.
"Delighted to see you, Mr. Knebworth. I've a very poor house, but I offer you a very rich welcome! I have had tea served in my little dining-room. Will you please introduce me to the members of your company?"
The courtesy, the old-world spirit of dignity, were very charming, and Michael felt a warm glow toward this fine old man who brought to this modern atmosphere the love and the fragrance of a past age.
"I should like to shoot a scene before we lose the light, Mr. Longvale," said Knebworth, "so, if you don't mind the meal being a scrambling one, I can give the company a quarter of an hour." He looked round. "Where is Foss?" he asked. "I want to change a scene."
"Mr. Foss said he was walking from Griff Towers," said one of the company. "He stopped behind to speak to Sir Gregory."
Jack Knebworth cursed his dilatory scenario-man with vigour and originality.
"I hope he hasn't stopped to borrow money," he said savagely. "That fellow's going to ruin my credit if I'm not careful."
He had overcome his objection to his new extra; possibly he felt that there was nobody else in the party whom he could take into his confidence without hurt to discipline.
"Is he that way inclined?"
"He's always short of money and always trying to make it by some fool trick which leaves him shorter than he was before. When a man gets that kind of bug in his head he's only a block away from prison. Are you going to stay the night? I don't think you'll be able to sleep here," he said, changing the subject, "but I suppose you'll be going back to London?"
"Not tonight," said Michael quickly. "Don't worry about me. I particularly do not wish to give you any trouble."
"Come and meet the old man," said Knebworth under his breath. "He's a queer old devil with the heart of a child."
"I like what I've seen of him," said Michael.
Mr. Longvale accepted the introduction all over again.
"I fear there will not be sufficient room in my dining-room for the whole Company. I have had a little table laid in my study. Perhaps you and your friends would like to have your tea there?"
"Why, that's very kind of you, Mr. Longvale. You have met Mr. Brixan?"
The old man smiled and nodded.
"I have met him without realizing that I've met him. I never remember names—a curious failing which was shared by my great-great-uncle Charles, with the result that he fell into extraordinary confusion when he wrote his memoirs, and in consequence many of the incidents he relates have been regarded as apocryphal."
He showed them into a narrow room that ran from the front to the back of the house. Its ceilings were supported by black rafters: the open wainscoting, polished and worn by generations of hands, must have been at least five hundred years old. There were no swords over this mantelpiece, thought Michael with an inward smile. Instead, there was a portrait of a handsome old gentleman, the dignity of whose face was arresting. There was only one word with an adequate description: it was majestic.
He made no comment on the picture, nor did the old man speak of it till later. The meal was hastily disposed of, and, sitting on the wall, Michael watched the last daylight scene shot, and was struck by the plastic genius of the girl. He knew enough of motion pictures and their construction to realize what it meant to the director to have in his hands one who could so faithfully reproduce the movements and the emotions which the old man dictated.
In other circumstances he might have thought it grotesque to see Jack Knebworth pretending to be a young girl, resting his elderly cheek coyly upon the back of his clasped hand, and walking with mincing steps from one side of the picture to the other. Bu he knew that the American was a mason who was cutting roughly the shape of the sculpture and leaving it to the finer artiste to express in her personality the delicate contours that would delight the eye of the picture-loving world. She was no longer Adele Leamington: she was Roselle, the heiress to an estate of which her wicked cousin was trying to deprive her. The story itself he recognized: a half-and-half plagiarism of "The Cat and the Canary", with which were blended certain situations from "The Miracle Man". He mentioned this fact when the scene was finished.
"I guess it's a steal," said Jack Knebworth philosophically, "and I didn't inquire too closely into it. It's Foss's story, and I should be pained to discover there was anything original in it."
Mr. Foss had made a tardy reappearance, and Michael found himself wondering what was the nature of that confidential interview which the writer had had with Sir Gregory.
Going back to the long sitting-room, he stood watching the daylight fade and speculating upon the one mystery within a mystery—the extraordinary effect which Adele had produced upon him.
Mike Brixan had known many beautiful women—women in every class of society. He had known the best and the worst, he had gaoled a few, and had watched one face a French firing-squad one grey wintry morning at Vincennes. He had liked many, nearly loved one, and it seemed, cold-bloodedly analysing his emotions, that he was in danger of actually loving a girl whom he had never met before that morning.
"Which is absurd," he said aloud.
"What is absurd?" asked Knebworth, who had come into the room unnoticed.
"I also wondered what you were thinking," smiled old Mr. Longvale, who had been watching the young man in silence.
"I—er—well, I was thinking of the portrait." Michael turned and indicated the picture above the fireplace, and in a sense he spoke the truth, for the thread of that thought had run through all others. "The face seemed familiar," he said, "which is absurd, because it is obviously an old painting."
Mr. Longvale lit two candles and carried one to the portrait. Again Michael looked, and again the majesty of the face impressed him.
"That is my great-great-uncle, Charles Henry," said old Mr. Longvale with pride; "or, as we call him affectionately in our family, the Great Monsieur."
Michael's face was half turned toward the window as the old man spoke… . Suddenly the room seemed to spin before his eyes. Jack Knebworth saw his face go white and caught him by the arm.
"What's the matter?" he asked.
"Nothing," said Michael unsteadily.
Knebworth was staring past him at the window.
"What was that?" he said.
With the exception of the illumination from the two candles and the faint dusk light that came from the garden, the room was in darkness.
"Did you see it?" he asked, and ran to the window, staring out.
"What was it?" asked old Mr. Longvale, joining him.
"I could have sworn I saw a head in the window. Did you see it, Brixan?"
"I saw something," said Michael unsteadily. "Do you mind if I go out into the garden?"
"I hoped you saw it. It looked like a monkey's head to me."
Michael nodded. He walked down the flagged passage into the garden, and, as he did so, slipped a Browning from his hip, pressed down the safety-catch, and dropped the pistol into his jacket pocket.
He disappeared, and five minutes later Knebworth saw him pacing the garden path, and went out to him.
"Did you see anything?"
"Nothing in the garden. You must have been mistaken."
"But didn't you see him?"
Michael hesitated.
"I thought I saw something," he said with an assumption of carelessness. "When are you going to shoot those night pictures of yours?"
"You saw something, Brixan—was it a face?"
Mike Brixan nodded.
