The Greatest Thrillers of Edgar Wallace. Edgar Wallace

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СКАЧАТЬ don’t like this,” said T.X., suddenly. “Does anybody know that we have made these discoveries?”

      “Nobody outside the office,” said Mansus, “unless, unless…”

      “Unless what?” asked the other, irritably. “Don’t be a jimp, Mansus. Get it off your mind. What is it?”

      “I am wondering,” said Mansus slowly, “if the landlord at Great James Street said anything. He knows we have made a search.”

      “We can easily find that out,” said T.X.

      They hailed a taxi and drove to Great James Street. That respectable thoroughfare was wrapped in sleep and it was some time before the landlord could be aroused. Recognizing T.X. he checked his sarcasm, which he had prepared for a keyless lodger, and led the way into the drawing room.

      “You didn’t tell me not to speak about it, Mr. Meredith,” he said, in an aggrieved tone, “and as a matter of fact I have spoken to nobody except the gentleman who called the same day.”

      “What did he want?” asked T.X.

      “He said he had only just discovered that Mr. Vassalaro had stayed with me and he wanted to pay whatever rent was due,” replied the other.

      “What like of man was he?” asked T.X.

      The brief description the man gave sent a cold chill to the Commissioner’s heart.

      “Kara for a ducat!” he said, and swore long and variously.

      “Cadogan Square,” he ordered.

      His ring was answered promptly. Mr. Kara was out of town, had indeed been out of town since Saturday. This much the manservant explained with a suspicious eye upon his visitors, remembering that his predecessor had lost his job from a too confiding friendliness with spurious electric fitters. He did not know when Mr. Kara would return, perhaps it would be a long time and perhaps a short time. He might come back that night or he might not.

      “You are wasting your young life,” said T.X. bitterly. “You ought to be a fortune teller.”

      “This settles the matter,” he said, in the cab on the way back. “Find out the first train for Tavistock in the morning and wire the George Hotel to have a car waiting.”

      “Why not go tonight?” suggested the other. “There is the midnight train. It is rather slow, but it will get you there by six or seven in the morning.”

      “Too late,” he said, “unless you can invent a method of getting from here to Paddington in about fifty seconds.”

      The morning journey to Devonshire was a dispiriting one despite the fineness of the day. T.X. had an uncomfortable sense that something distressing had happened. The run across the moor in the fresh spring air revived him a little.

      As they spun down to the valley of the Dart, Mansus touched his arm.

      “Look at that,” he said, and pointed to the blue heavens where, a mile above their heads, a white-winged aeroplane, looking no larger than a very distant dragon fly, shimmered in the sunlight.

      “By Jove!” said T.X. “What an excellent way for a man to escape!”

      “It’s about the only way,” said Mansus.

      The significance of the aeroplane was borne in upon T.X. a few minutes later when he was held up by an armed guard. A glance at his card was enough to pass him.

      “What is the matter?” he asked.

      “A prisoner has escaped,” said the sentry.

      “Escaped — by aeroplane?” asked T.X.

      “I don’t know anything about aeroplanes, sir. All I know is that one of the working party got away.”

      The car came to the gates of the prison and T.X. sprang out, followed by his assistant. He had no difficulty in finding the Governor, a greatly perturbed man, for an escape is a very serious matter.

      The official was inclined to be brusque in his manner, but again the magic card produced a soothing effect.

      “I am rather rattled,” said the Governor. “One of my men has got away. I suppose you know that?”

      “And I am afraid another of your men is going away, sir,” said T.X. , who had a curious reverence for military authority. He produced his paper and laid it on the governor’s table.

      “This is an order for the release of John Lexman, convicted under sentence of fifteen years penal servitude.”

      The Governor looked at it.

      “Dated last night,” he said, and breathed a long sigh of relief. “Thank the Lord! — that is the man who escaped!”

Chapter VIII

       Table of Contents

      Two years after the events just described, T.X. journeying up to London from Bath was attracted by a paragraph in the Morning Post. It told him briefly that Mr. Remington Kara, the influential leader of the Greek Colony, had been the guest of honor at a dinner of the Hellenic Society.

      T.X. had only seen Kara for a brief space of time following that tragic morning, when he had discovered not only that his best friend had escaped from Dartmoor prison and disappeared, as it were, from the world at a moment when his pardon had been signed, but that that friend’s wife had also vanished from the face of the earth.

      At the same time — it might, as even T.X. admitted, have been the veriest coincidence that Kara had also cleared out of London to reappear at the end of six months. Any question addressed to him, concerning the whereabouts of the two unhappy people, was met with a bland expression of ignorance as to their whereabouts.

      John Lexman was somewhere in the world, hiding as he believed from justice, and with him was his wife. T.X. had no doubt in his mind as to this solution of the puzzle. He had caused to be published the story of the pardon and the circumstances under which that pardon had been secured, and he had, moreover, arranged for an advertisement to be inserted in the principal papers of every European country.

      It was a moot question amongst the departmental lawyers as to whether John Lexman was not guilty of a technical and punishable offence for prison breaking, but this possibility did not keep T.X. awake at nights. The circumstances of the escape had been carefully examined. The warder responsible had been discharged from the service, and had almost immediately purchased for himself a beer house in Falmouth, for a sum which left no doubt in the official mind that he had been the recipient of a heavy bribe.

      Who had been the guiding spirit in that escape — Mrs. Lexman, or Kara?

      It was impossible to connect Kara with the event. The motor car had been traced to Exeter, where it had been hired by a “foreign-looking gentleman,” but the chauffeur, whoever he was, had made good his escape. An inspection of Kara’s hangars at Wembley showed that his two monoplanes had not been removed, and T.X. СКАЧАТЬ