CLOWNS AND CRIMINALS - Complete Series (Thriller Classics). E. Phillips Oppenheim

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СКАЧАТЬ any plans made at all?” Peter Ruff asked.

      “But naturally,” the woman answered. “There is a motor car, even now, of sixty-horse-power, stands ready at a garage in Putney. If Jean can once reach it, he can reach the coast. At a certain spot near Southampton there is a small steamer waiting. After that, everything is easy.”

      “My task, then,” Peter Ruff said, thoughtfully, “is to take Jean Lemaitre from this cafe in Soho, as far as Putney, and get him a fair start?”

      “It is enough,” she answered. “There is a cordon of spies around the district. Every day they seem to chose in upon us. They search the houses, one by one. Only last night, the Hotel de Netherlands—a miserable little place on the other side of the street—was suddenly surrounded by policemen and every room ransacked. It may be our turn to-night.”

      “In one hour’s time,” Peter Ruff said, glancing at his watch, “I shall present myself as a doctor at the cafe. Tell me the address. Tell me what to say which will insure my admission to Jean Lemaitre!”

      “The cafe,” she answered, “is called the Hotel de Flandres. You enter the restaurant and you walk to the desk. There you find always Monsieur Antoine. You say to him simply—‘The Double-Four!’ He will answer that he understands, and he will conduct you at once to Lemaitre.”

      Ruff nodded.

      “In the meantime,” he said, “let it be understood in the cafe—if there is any one who is not in the secret—that one of the waiters is sick. I shall come to attend him.”

      She nodded thoughtfully.

      “As well that way as any other,” she answered. “Monsieur is very kind. A bientot!”

      She shook hands and they parted. Peter Ruff drove back to his rooms, rang up an adjoining garage for a small covered car such as are usually let out to medical men, and commenced to pack a small black bag with the outfit necessary for his purpose. Now that he was actually immersed in his work, the sense of depression had passed away. The keen stimulus of danger had quickened his blood. He knew very well that the woman had not exaggerated. There was no man more wanted by the French or the English police than the man who had sought his aid, and the district in which he had taken shelter was, in some respects, the very worst for his purpose. Nevertheless, Peter Ruff, who believed, at the bottom of his heart, in his star, went on with his preparations feeling morally certain that Jean Lemaitre would sleep on the following night in his native land.

      At precisely the hour agreed upon, a small motor brougham pulled up outside the door of the Hotel de Flandres and its occupant—whom ninety-nine men out of a hundred would at once, unhesitatingly, have declared to be a doctor in moderate practice—pushed open the swing doors of the restaurant and made his way to the desk. He was of medium height; he wore a frock-coat—a little frayed; gray trousers which had not been recently pressed; and thick boots.

      “I understand that one of your waiters requires my attendance,” he said, in a tone not unduly raised but still fairly audible. “I am Dr. Gilette.”

      “Dr. Gilette,” Antoine repeated, slowly.

      “And number Double-Four,” the doctor murmured.

      Antoine descended from his desk.

      “But certainly, Monsieur!” he said. “The poor fellow declares that he suffers. If he is really ill, he must go. It sounds brutal, but what can one do? We have so few rooms here, and so much business. Monsieur will come this way?”

      Antoine led the way from the cafe into a very smelly region of narrow passages and steep stairs.

      “It is to be arranged?” Antoine whispered, as they ascended.

      “Without a doubt,” the doctor answered. “Were there spies in the cafe?”

      “Two,” Antoine answered.

      The doctor nodded, and said no more. He mounted to the third story. Antoine led him through a small sitting-room and knocked four times upon the door of an inner room. It suddenly was opened. A man—unshaven, terrified, with that nameless fear in his face which one sees reflected in the expression of some trapped animal—stood there looking out at them.

      “‘Double-Four’!” the doctor said, softly. “Go back into the room, please. Antoine will kindly leave us.”

      “Who are you?” the man gasped.

      “‘Double-Four’!” the doctor answered. “Obey me, and be quick for your life! Strip!”

      The man obeyed.

      Barely twenty minutes later, the doctor—still carrying his bag—descended the stairs. He entered the cafe from a somewhat remote door. Antoine hurried to meet him, and walked by his side through the place. He asked many questions, but the doctor contented himself with shaking his head. Almost in silence he left Antoine, who conducted him even to the door of his motor. The proprietor of the cafe watched the brougham disappear, and then returned to his desk, sighing heavily.

      A man who had been sipping a liqueur dose at hand, laid down his paper.

      “One of your waiters ill, did I understand?” he asked. Monsieur Antoine was at once eloquent. It was the ill-fortune which had dogged him for the last four months! The man had been taken ill there in the restaurant. He was a Gascon—spoke no English—and had just arrived. It was not possible for him to be removed at the moment, so he had been carried to an empty bedroom. Then had come the doctor and forbidden his removal. Now for a week he had lain there and several of his other voyageurs had departed. One did not know how these things got about, but they spoke of infection. The doctor, who had just left—Dr. Gilette of Russell Square, a most famous physician—had assured him that there was no infection—no fear of any. But what did it matter—that? People were so hard to convince. Monsieur would like a cigar? But certainly! There were here some of the best.

      Antoine undid the cabinet and opened a box of Havanas. John Dory selected one and called for another liqueur.

      “You have trouble often with your waiters, I dare say,” he remarked. “They tell me that all Frenchmen who break the law in their own country, find their way, sooner or later, to these parts. You have to take them without characters, I suppose?”

      Antoine lifted his shoulders.

      “But what could one do?” he exclaimed. “Characters, they were easy enough to write—but were they worth the paper they were written on? Indeed no!”

      “Not only your waiters,” Dory continued, “but those who stay in the hotels round here have sometimes an evil name.”

      Antoine shrugged his shoulders.

      “For myself,” he said, “I am particular. We have but a few rooms, but we are careful to whom we let them.”

      “Do you keep a visitors’ book?”

      “But no, Monsieur!” Antoine protested. “For why the necessity? There are so few who come to stay for more than the night—just now scarcely any one at all.”

      There entered, at that moment, a tall, thin man dressed in dark clothes, who walked with his hands in his overcoat pockets, as though it were a habit. He came straight to Dory and handed him a piece СКАЧАТЬ