RGL e-Book Cover
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
Go to Home Page
This work is out of copyright in countries with a copyright
period of 70 years or less, after the year of the author's death.
If it is under copyright in your country of residence,
do not download or redistribute this file.
Original content added by RGL (e.g., introductions, notes,
RGL covers) is proprietary and protected by copyright.
RGL e-Book Cover
The Blue Book Magazine, May 1922, with "The Condor's Hoard"
"NO, no, Chevalier," said the Honorable John Brass indulgently to the fat gentleman to whom, somewhere in the neighborhood of the last green on the Testmouth-on-Sea links, he was giving a little friendly golf advice and instruction. "No, you want to hit at the little mound—not pat it. There's a lot of infernal nonsense talked, about this pressing. And it gets a lot of men scared stiff. Hit the ball—lay into it. Keep your eye on it, certainly—but hit the little devil. This half-swinging's all very well in its way, but—well, look here. Let out at it—like this."
The club hummed in the air like a well-handled battle-ax as the Honorable John inexorably cut the head of a dandelion into a shapeless fleck of vegetable pulp.
"See, Chevalier?" he said. "Like that. You want to put a bit of beef into it, you know. Distance—that's what you're after, distance—mileage, in fact. Time 'em, of course—must time 'em properly. Also keep your eye on the ball. And hit. Don't fan the ball—it ain't hot, and it ain't a lady. Hey, boy—just tee up a ball here. I'll show you what I mean, Chevalier."
The fat gentlenian with the Tartar-type face which is more common in Russia than in Testmouth watched the Honorable John with the usual respect of a golfing beginner for an expert (even though self-styled) as he addressed the ball which a caddie had promptly teed up.
"A nice, easy swing," said the Honorable John, "easy—but with some nourishment in it, mind. None of your pat-a-cake stuff. Eye on the ball—and head down. Stand back, boy. Now, I'm going for distance. Watch, now."
He swung at the ball, like a man cutting down a thick oak tree against time. It may not be elegant, but it is very true, to say that he grunted furiously as he lashed out at the little white dot sitting so demurely on its mound, and to add that he put some "nourishment" into the shot would be but a feeble description of the sheer brute force with which he flailed and thrashed the lumpy-headed club through the atmosphere.
The ball darted, with a faint, whistling wail from the tee, and curled and curled and curled in a vast, sickening curve away to the right. The wind took it and pushed it round and round so that it fell finally fifty yards off the golf course, beyond the road, into the chicken-run of a hard-worked ex-officer who kept a poultry farm consisting of twenty dejected hens, a couple of languid roosters and a bag of excellent golf-clubs within easy reach of the links.
The Honorable John's friend and partner, Colonel Clumber, who was standing by, burst into a roar of unfeeling laughter, the caddie half grinned, looked scared, and turned his back; and even the fat beginner whom the partners called "Chevalier," looked a little bemazed.
"My foot slipped," lied the Honorable John calmly, shamelessly and without effort. "If my foot hadn't slipped, that would have been notoriously one of the longest balls ever hit on this course."
He lifted an eyelid menacingly at the hearty guffaw of his partner, and handed the club to the caddie.
"Give 'em a good clean, boy, ready for the afternoon," he ordered. "And now, Chevalier, what about some lunch? Then I'll see if I can't play your best ball this afternoon—giving you four strokes."
"If you can give the Chevalier's and my best ball four strokes," said the Colonel swiftly and defiantly, "there's five pounds reward from each of us waiting for you. And if you can't, there's ten coming to us. Man, you're throwing your money away."
The Tartar-visaged gentleman nodded.
"We shall do our best quality play to win his money away from him, no?" he stated. "Me, I shall put plenty beef to it and hit far balls—for five pounds again, is it not? Very good, yes. Let us go to lunch, then. Me, I learn more of this remarkable game each day I go to it. By practice and listening at your instruction, mon ami! Not at all, certainly. When my friend Araseff comes to settle in England, I shall knock his head at golf-playing, already. Also his money, no! Ha-ha! In one week I shall be twenty-four handicap and that will be enough yet to defeat the good Araseff. Come, then—let us have lunch, yes?"
So the three went off to the motor which was waiting to take them back to the house of the gentleman whose game the Honorable John had been endeavoring to improve.
THE Chevalier D'Abrinoff was not an old friend of those cheerful though somewhat unscrupulous adventurers, the Honorable John Brass and Colonel Clumber. Indeed, a week before, he had been profoundly ignorant of their existence. He had made their acquaintance upon the links, and seeming to possess much in common with them, he had rather fostered the intimacy which a week's battling over the course had begun.
The Chevalier was not, broadly speaking, an attractive man. True, he appeared to possess a very great deal of money, but he was lacking in personal charm, and he was destitute of magnetism. His English was difficult,—"scrambled" was the Honorable John's term for it,—and his ideas of sportsmanship were limited.
Ordinarily the partners would have taken no more interest in him than they took in the local representative of the Temperance League—but because, within a quarter of an hour of meeting him, the Honorable John had been visited by one of his famous "hunches" or convictions that good (financial variety) was coming to them through him, the Colonel had consented to associate himself with his partner's avowed intent to learn a little more of the Chevalier than it was possible to acquire without the trouble of cultivating an intimate acquaintanceship.
"TF you ask me," the Colonel had said when the Honorable John had first stated his intention of keeping a sharp "lamp" on the Chevalier, "if you want my opinion, you can have it. I think you're wasting your time, and mine too. Also his! This man is just one of those Continental sportsmen who have gathered together enough money over there to make it worth their while to find a decent country to salt it down in and live next to it. He's a harmless sort of retired business man who's either bought or lifted the title Chevalier; and if you think you're going to get anything worth having out of him, you're pawing at the wrong rabbit-hole."
But the Honorable John's views did not chime with those of his partner. He had smiled blandjy upon receipt of the Colonel's opinion, nodded indulgently and reached for another cigar.
"Well, well, maybe you're right, Squire," he answered, "and maybe you're wrong—probably wrong. In fact, I have a healthy hunch that you're wrong. But that'll be all right. We shall see. It won't interfere with my holiday down here by the sea if I use my brains a bit. It's a holiday for my body, but my brains don't need any rest. I'll do the fine work—if any is required—and you can just enjoy yourself."
Upon these terms they had cultivated the Chevalier, and within a week they had arrived at a stage of intimacy which, said the Honorable John, bade fair to produce results.
PRESSED by his partner to hazard an opinion upon the results he anticipated, the Honorable John replied with unabated confidence but very little information.
"It's a bit early to expect a lot of detail, Squire," he said, good-humoredly, pouring himself another glass of their extremely rare pre-war liqueur brandy, "but several points about the Chevalier and his general style have struck me. In fact, I'm giving them my consideration, and though I don't as a rule hold with forming plans prematurely, I don't know that I've got any objection to teaching you my methods."
He cocked a wise old eye at his partner, who had emitted a faint growl of disgust.
"You don't want to feel hurt at my saying that, you know, Squire—any more than you'd feel hurt if I had curly golden hair with one of these matinée-idol waves in it. It's natural for me to see significance in little things, details, that you wouldn't notice in a month—just as it would be natural for me to have curly golden hair if—well, if I had it, that is."
"Only you haven't got it," said the Colonel, running a greenish eye over his partner's practically hairless and luncheon-flushed dome. "Go on, then—what have you noticed about the Chevalier, anyway?"
"I'll explain," said the Honorable John Brass tranquilly, and proceeded to do so.
"First of all, we've only got the Chevalier's word that his name's D'Abrinoff and that he's the Chevalier of it—whatever or wherever D'Abrinoff is. I sort of gathered that it's in Russia, and he certainly has a Russian kind of face. He's settled here in that big house, Cliffcrest, for life, and I happen to know he's wanting to buy that bigger house called Test Place for this pal of his, Araseff, who is coming from Russia before long—also to settle down here. (By the way, I've got a two-months option on Test House. The man I played against in the medal round for the Visitors' Cup was the owner. So if this Araseff likes the place, we shall switch a thousand down our siding, anyway.)
"Well, there it is. Here's a man—a brace of 'em—who must have carted a great big bale of good money out of Russia; you'll agree with that, I suppose. But as far as I can see, nobody has any money in Russia—except those that don't deserve it. All right! We'll put down D'Abrinoff's money as some he's got by doubtful means—money, in fact, that we're more or less entitled to get from him. The same applies to his forthcoming pal Araseff."
"Well, how are you going to get it, huh?" demanded the Colonel. "You want to get rid of any idea that because he talks that botched-up English and plays golf like a half-armed buffalo, he's easy."
"No." The'Honorable John shook his head. "He isn't easy. I'll own that I should hate to be at his mercy. I haven't overlooked that. Just how I'm going to arrange about transferring some of that Rusisan loot from him to us I haven't decided. But there's no hurry. It's there—when we get ready to take it."
"How d'you know it's there?" scoffed the Colonel. "It's more probably underground in the vaults of some London bank."
The Honorable John smiled blandly.
"Well, no—not exactly," he disagreed. "You see, there's a strong-room at Cliffcrest. The house used to belong to Carr, the big money-lender."
"How do you know that?"
"Sing happens to have made friends in some Chinese sort of fashion with the Chevalier's servant—who looks to me to be a sort of Mongolian cross between an Asiatic Russian and a Chinaman. Anyway, they can talk to each other in some sort of language that sounds like putting a bit of cold veal through a rusty mincing machine. Sing says it's the way they talk in Chinese Turkestan—wherever that is, if anywhere. This Kut-Su it was who told Sing about the strong-room. And Sing, like a good lad, got Kut going on the opium or chloroform or chlorine or whatever these chaps take as a little stimulant, until he gleaned that the Chinaman took a great interest in the strong-room—had a lot of stuff of some sort in it, in fact."
"What stuff?" demanded the Colonel, suddenly enlivened.
"Hah, I thought that would twang your heartstrings," smiled John. "I suppose it's money or jewelry—or anyway, valuable stuff, if he keeps it in a strong-room."
"Did Sing get anything else?"
The Honorable John nodded.
"D'Abrinoff sleeps with an automatic on the table by his bed," he announced.
The Colonel looked gloomy. "Anything else?"
"And the girl, Sonya, who seems to be his ward, is in love, Sing says, with a young, good-looking guy stopping at Littlesey just along the coast. Some young foreigner—French, Sing thinks. The girl meets him most afternoons when the Chevalier is on the links learning how to win his forthcoming pal's money."
"Does the Chevalier know?"
"No. He tells me his idea is to marry Sonya to Araseff when he arrives. Well, that's about all," concluded the Honorable John, rising. "Leave it to me. Turn that strong-room over in your mind now and then."
He rang the bell and commanded Sing to get out the car to drive them to the links a quarter of a mile away where they were due to meet the Chevalier.
IT was perhaps three days later when the Honorable John suffered a slight accident. True, it was nothing more serious than a moderately sprained shoulder-blade, acquired up the golf-links during a rather hopeless effort to give the Chevalier's and his partner's best ball two strokes for a ten-pound note. It had proved to be an off-day for the Honorable John, who most disconcertingly had found himself four down, with five to play, at the fourteenth hole. He had already lost his temper, and in order to avoid losing the match also he had endeavored to put into his drive rather more "beef" than his anatomy could conveniently spare for the purpose. He had missed,the ball, dug a hole in the tee, broken his driver, sprained his shoulder-blade, and narrowly escaped a ricked ankle and a stiff neck. When he became coherent again, he resigned the match, paid his losses and gave up golf for the rest of the week.
So it befell that he chanced one morning to find himself, in the course of a gentle, appetite-stimulating stroll through the town, gazing rather idly into the windows of a photographer's shop, running his eye over the ladies portrayed therein, speculating pleasantly which of those exhibited were "his style" and which were not.
His eyes fell upon the photograph of a good-looking youth in flannels, and his gaze suddenly became fixed.
He knew the flanneled one, for it was none other than Mr. Raoul Avelin, the youth whom Sonya, the beautiful ward of the Chevalier D'Abrinoff, was so prone to meet along the beach midway between Littlesey and Testmouth—without her guardian's knowledge or permission.
But it was not his recognition of the lad which caused the Honorable John's heavy brows to amalgamate themselves into a frown. It was an idea that had occurred to him. He slanted his head and screwed up his eyes, studying the photograph.
"Now, is that just my fancy—or is it so?" he asked himself, rather vaguely; and presumably in order to get a better or a different view of the portrait, he stepped back abruptly—onto the entire foot of a baggily-clad gentleman wearing a futurist tie and an angler's hat who was gazing rather moonily down the street at the weather. Clearly an artist, and judging from the friendly, though rather wan, smile with which he had rescued his foot, a man of a good-natured disposition.
The Honorable John apologized, attributing the mishap to his interest in the photograph.
"I'm sorry, Squire," said the old rascal. "I hope I haven't crushed your foot—lucky I had these tennis;shoes on. Didn't know you were so near. Very careless of me—but I was so interested in wondering who that young chap"—he indicated Mr. Avelin's portrait—"would look like if he had a beard, that I rather lost myself."
He frowned at the picture.
INTERESTED by the somewhat novel reason for his absence of mind given by the Honorable John, the artist released his double-handed grip on his foot and peered at the portrait.
"He reminds me of some one, that lad—somebody I've seen somewhere with a beard. Is he familiar to you, old man?" inquired John.
The artist moved his head about, getting various angles of view, then drew out a sketch-pad and a pencil, and jabbed the pencil-point swiftly but intricately over the pad.
The Honorable John peered over his shoulder.
"Well, you're certainly a bird with the pencil, friend," he admitted. "That's the lad, right enough."
"I will now give him a beard—shall it be a big one, or a spade one, or an imperial or torpedo or a forked one?" He laughed.
"Give him an ordinary pointed one—spade, hey? Make it a spade."
The artist obliged, looked surprised, then turned to the Honorable John.
"Now, do you know who he reminds you of?" he asked smiling.
The Honorable John's eyes glowed as he nodded.
"Well—you can't miss it very well, can you? I've never seen anybody who looked more like the late Czar of Russia—made twenty years younger—than that lad you've drawn there. Queer, that, hey? I knew I'd seen the face before."
The artist good-naturedly tore off the sheet.
"If you're interested, perhaps you'd care to accept the little rough sketch!" he said.
The Honorable John did care, accepted it with thanks, and the artist limped away.
"If that lad Avelin isn't a blood relation to the Romanoffs," he mused as he went homeward; "you call me no judge of a face."
He was so deeply lost in thought that his partner had to speak quite sharply to him about getting on with the extremely good lunch which Sing had prepared for them.
THAT evening the partners were dining with the Chevalier D'Abrinoff.
Like his guests, the Chevalier was a man who appeared to devote at least fifty per cent of his brains to the problem of good food and plenty of it; and this evening he had rather extended himself in the matter of uniquely nourishing his guests—and himself. His ward Sonya, however, seemed to find it dull work. Indeed, she hardly troubled to disguise her opinion that she did not find the conversation of the three gentlemen, which rarely drifted from the merits or demerits of the many dishes, either wildly exhilarating or tensely interesting. Throughout the meal she was so aloof from and out of touch with the general trend of the conversation—which was indeed rather akin to the sort of conversation one might have expected from a trio of eighteen handicap chefs—that it was entirely without regret, and indeed with rather an air of relief, that her Tartar-visaged guardian and his guests saw her leave the table.
"She is yet too young to possess any soul for her necessary food, h'm," explained the Chevalier. "She is of a romantic nature yet—and interests herself nothing in the eating of her food and drinking her wine." He sighed. "Youth—romance! Good things both, maybe, certainly. But for me—for us all, h'm?—we are not of an age for romance. Come, then, we will now drink wine, steadily. I—have some good wine. You shall see." They did so.
The Chevalier had spoken no more than the stark truth when he had claimed to possess some good wine. It was more than good—it was wonderful, priceless, unique.
The partners—both judges of wine—were amazed. And their amazement was not due wholly to the unexpected quality of the wine; it was inspired partly by their host's method of dealing with it. He did not drink it in the manner of the epicure or even that of the half-trained wine-drinker. Not at all! He lapped it up as a haymaker laps cider or a navvy drinks free beer—to quote the subsequent inelegant comment of the disgusted Honorable John.
Nor did the Chevalier confine his lapping to any one wine. He distributed his efforts over many wines and many vintages—each fit for a king's cellar. As the feeble-minded butterfly or the businesslike bee flits from flower to flower taking a sip from each, so the Chevalier flitted from wine to wine—though he took more than a sip from every bottle.
It annoyed the partners excessively that just as they seemed quietly settled down to an amazingly fine port, the Chevalier should swiftly finish the bottle and cause to be produced—with extreme hospitality but shockingly bad judgment—some perfectly marvelous Madeira, which, in its turn, he would presently abandon for some startling Burgundy—the Burgundy presently yielding in its turn to Tokay!
It was a very remarkable and rather bewildering experience for the partners. Had the quality of the wines—all of them —been less superb than it was, the whole affair would have been very offensive to them. But as the Honorable John afterwards said: "How can you be annoyed with a man who knocks you off a wine fit for a prince in order to start you on one fit for a king, and then suddenly knocks you off that and insists on your tackling a wine fit for a queen! What can you do about it?" What indeed?
It was abundantly evident that though he indubitably possessed a magnificent cellar, the Chevalier had no more idea of how to treat it than a beast of the field. It was a very extreme case of casting pearls before swine, or to be more precise, of casting nectar before a powerful but soulless suction-plant. No man who had ransacked the world for such vintages would have treated it with such brutality. That at least was certain—and it added another and a difficult section to the jigsaw puzzle as to who, and what, the Chevalier was, where he came from and why, and what he had and where he got it—and was it transferable?
PAINED, puzzled and rather annoyed, the Honorable John presently rose from the mahogany and excused himself for a few moments. He was feeling a little faint, he said, and with the Chevalier's acquiescence, he would take a ten-minute turn in the garden with a cigar. A breath of fresh sea-air would abolish that touch of faintness.
The Chevalier, flushed and winy, agreed with a faint air of surprised pity for what he evidently regarded as his guest's limited capacity.
"But you will return quickly and drink a glass wine, yes?"
He spoke as though they had not already surrounded innumerable glasses of wine. The Honorable John smiled and promised, leaving the dour Colonel grimly to measure himself against the Russian—no light task, but one which the Colonel was determined to see through.
The Honorable John was well satisfied, for his sudden hunger for a breath of sea-air had been inspired not by faintness but by a glimpse through the half-open French window of the pale flicker of a light dress down the garden. Of the three men, he was the only one sitting at such an angle that the moonlit garden was partly visible to him. He was interested in the relations between the girl and her guardian, for he had surprised more than once a look on the girl's face which expressed feelings for the Chevalier which resembled hatred and disgust more nearly than any other emotion.
He took a cigar (which he did not light) and disappeared into the garden, closing the French window behind him.
For a moment he stood bareheaded in the cool salt breeze that flowed gently in from the sea. Far to his right and below him, a band was playing on a promenade ablaze with light, and a chain of glowing electric lamps, like a festoon of yellowish stars, marked the pier, crowded with people. But up here on the cliff it was dark and silent, seeming oddly remote from the life and light of the place where the holiday folk sought their pleasure.
The Honorable John, nodded softly to himself and strolled quietly across the lawn, down a flight of terrace-steps, across another lawn, passed through a strip of shrubbery—very silently—and so discovered a little summerhouse. From inside the summerhouse came the sound of a woman's voice. She was speaking softly, but evidently she was angry, for her voice was rising with every word.
The Honorable John looked, hesitated, shrugged his shoulders; and moving as silently as a stalking tiger, he went close up to the summerhouse window, listening.
THE girl Sonya was speaking in Russian. The Honorable John's lips compressed. He was no more familiar with the Russian tongue than that in use on the planet Venus. But his frown disappeared as a man spoke in the summerhouse:
"Use English, beloved; Kut-Su does not understand English as well as Russian."
It was a pleasant voice, almost entirely free from accent; and the Honorable John judged it belonged to the young man Raoul Avelin, who, with a beard, would have looked like a Romanoff.
"I do as you say, dear Michael," replied the girl softly. "But they sit at their wine—their stolen wine—he and the two fat men who have become his friends, and the serpent Kut-Su entertains that silent Chinaman in their own place. My little maid, whom I can trust, watches those two yellow China barbarians even as I sit here. Listen well, little Michael, to me. That other, the tiger-wolf Araseff, comes within a few days now—and he says that I am to be Araseff's wife."
The Honorable John, close against the wooden wall of the summerhouse, heard a low, menacing sound rasp across the pleasant voice of the girl Sonya, as it might have been a muffled curse upon the man called Araseff.
But evidently she did not fear the menace of that exclamation, for she laughed softly.
"Ah, dearest one, that is impossible—that I should be wife to that unspeakable one. The sea is clean and at hand; if it were necessary, I would lie close and quiet and at peace in the embrace of the good sea rather than suffer one touch of that man's hand. I—no, we—we two, little Michael—shall be gone before the red shadow of Araseff crosses the threshold of that house. Rest content to know that. I know that you are so brave, so impetuous, so courageous, dear heart, that you would be willing to go now with me, even as I am,—look, in fragile slippers, in this little dress!—penniless both, to face the world. But I will not have it so, perhaps in the future to see you subjected to the indignities of the poverty-stricken!" Her sweet voice rose. "You, you, who alone of all your house have been spared by the mercy of God from those ravening wolves that have devastated and despoiled and destroyed Russia, blotted out all it had of sweetness, pity, love and hope—you, last noble of a house of nobles—stripped of all save your life alone, by these vultures, these eaters of human hearts—you, Michael, who have served in the Czar's own bodyguard, have been decorated by his own hands—I say I will never submit to see you subject to the humiliations that the poor must face daily.
"Dear heart, you have suffered enough indignity for a whole lifetime. And I could not endure to live by your side and watch you struggle at absurd and futile tasks for which you have not been trained, to be at the command of the ignorant and base-born. Pride, you whisper, my beloved—ah, yes, pride, pride! So be it! These are the days when we hear strange and startling tales of equality. But I have seen the herd at close quarters, even as you, and I despise them. Once I pitied them; now I take shelter behind my pride, and I will die before I come again to close quarters with them. I speak for you too. We will die together before we mingle again with the low-born, Michael. I care not. Remember Ekaterinburg!"
The Honorable John fought down a vague impulse to applaud the sentiments of the girl, for he too had not forgotten that brutal tragedy of the last days of the Czar, his wife and children.
THE girl went on again, more quietly.
"I will not have it that you ever seek tasks in the market for men," she said flatly. "You are of the blood royal, and it is not fitting. Listen to me, little Michael: The man D'Abrinoff has in his strong-room much plunder. Soon Araseff arrives with more. Then they will divide—and deserting their lost cause in Russia, will settle here for their lives. These were the men who ordered and supervised the massacre of your house, and who accumulated all your treasures, your jewels, and those of many other noble houses also. Many of these jewels, much of the plunder, reposes in the strong-room—awaiting the division with the tiger-wolf that is even now en route to this place. I desire to take—for you, beloved—such jewels as are truly yours, no more than these—and to go with you away. The jewels shall provide for our freedom and our happiness. Give me, make me a plan, a little plan, then. I have thought and thought until my brain spins, but I am not trained—familiar with the sleights of the thief—to break into strongrooms; and—my spirit begins to fail, Michael, to fail."
She ceased, and the Honorable John heard a sob.
HE passed quickly round to the front of the summer-house. But he had to deal with a man who, for all his youth, had issued from a welter of treachery and murder and cruelty which had taught him much. The white dress swayed back clear of the man, who moved with extraordinary swiftness.
The moonlight shone with a dull, bluish gleam upon the barrel of an automatic leveled at the Honorable John before he could speak.
"What do you seek?" came the voice of the Russian, hard, metallic and cold.
"Oh, just a few words with you," said the Honorable John. "I'm a friend. Never mind about the battery.I—happened to overhear what this young lady said—er—quite by chance. And I think I can help you—about that strong-room!"
He spoke swiftly for a little, assured himself that they understood, and so went back to the battle with the bottles.
"That's a girl worth while," he mused as he went. "She certainly isn't ever going to shine as a socialist—but she's got the courage of her convictions, anyway. Well, well, right or wrong, I guess we'll be helping her—for her sake, for her Michael's sake, and in a way, for our own.... Lord! To think I've taught that mad wolf golf. A royal and ancient game like golf, played by a man-eating Bolshevist like that!"
He pushed through the French window to reinforce Colonel Clumber against the apparently copper-lined Chevalier. They were still engaged in conversation and conviviality, but the Honorable John perceived at a glance that the end was near, and that his partner had successfully maintained, as it were, the traditions of the partnership. At first glance the ex-peer looked as rigidly sober as the captain of a team of undertaker's mutes, whereas the self-styled Chevalier was far, very far, from being in that creditable condition.
Whether the Colonel had achieved this admirable and praiseworthy result by sheer force of will and capacity, or whether it resulted from the indiscriminate and senseless greed with which the Chevalier, from the beginning, had embarked upon the carouse, the Honorable John neither knew nor cared. He had a great deal to do that night, and a limited amount of time to do it in.
The Chevalier—or as the Honorable John now knew him to be, the Bolshevist who had betrayed even his own unspeakable cause—had no chance whatever. Starting level, and keeping level it might have been a tight match—in any case it was that, but the Colonel- had broken "the back of the task, and with the Honorable John, revived and determined, now taking up the running, the man D'Abrinoff had no more chance than a sweet apple in the hands of a healthy small boy.
Quickly, confidently, mercilessly, the Honorable John settled down to make the pace of the carouse one which would settle the Chevalier in the shortest possible space of time.
LESS than an hour had elapsed before the Chevalier was sound asleep on, a big couch, and the partners, slightly flushed but otherwise apparently normal, sitting side by side at the table, awaiting a report from Sing, to whom the Colonel, on the pretext of getting a breath of fresh air, had conveyed the importance of rendering Kut-Su, the only one of the servants still up, harmless.
Under the Honorable John's big, muscular hand lay a bunch of keys. As they waited, he was telling his partner briefly what he had learned in the summerhouse.
"It's more or less what my hunch hinted at, Squire," he said softly. "That saturated hound on the couch was one of the Bolshevist bosses in Russia. But he and his pal Araseff, another of 'em, saw the end in sight, and collecting all the plunder they had accumulated, that blackguard over there cleared out and came to England. He brought the bulk of the plunder, and also the girl Sonya—whom he means to marry to Araseff, when he arrives with the rest of the loot. She also is the only survivor of a family of Russian aristocrats, and she is in love with another one—this chap who calls himself Avelin, who is the last of another family which was closely related to the royal, family over there. Both Sonya's people and his have been killed and robbed—stripped—by D'Abrinoff and Araseff, though they fancy she doesn't know it. But the only reason the girl has pretended to yield to their plans is because she feels she's got to get back from them some of hers and Michael's—that's one of Avelin's real names—property. She's a remarkable girl, and she's got a lot of sense. Michael, who escaped from Russia somehow, is either a duke or baron or something, and she knows that if he has to start afresh as a plain hustler in this or some other country, and to earn his own living,—and hers,—they are going to have a very poor time of it. She's right, too. They're a couple of little aristocrats, and they've never been taught how to do anything worth paying for, and she knows it; and right or wrong, she's proud of it. I guess, after seeing some of the Bolshevistic brotherhood, she's right. She'd sooner die than take any more excursions among ordinary everyday folk; and right or wrong, good luck to her! She's got some pluck, if her social ideas are a bit on the lofty side. Well, I've agreed to get them back whatever share of their property is in the strongroom."
The Colonel nodded his agreement. "And what we—"
The Honorable John broke off as a yellow-hued, hard-faced individual entered soundlessly—Sing, his Chinese valet, confidential private thug and all-round sword-bearer.
He grinned at his master.
"Kut-Su allee same sleepee, please," he said softly. "Him dopee—you seeing, master, allee same dluggee."
The Honorable John nodded.
"Good lad, Sing. Very well done! I'm very pleased with you. See about promoting you one of these days, very likely." He rose, the Chevalier's keys in his hand.
"Now, what about this strong-room? D'ye know where it is, hey?"
Sing nodded.
"Right, my lad. Lead us to it! And quietly, mind. Get a move on!"
The door closed softly as the three old campaigners disappeared—moving through the shadows of the big house with no more sound than three ghosts—dangerous ones.
They were back within twenty minutes. Only the Honorable John entered the room of slaughtered bottles, and he did not linger longer than was necessary to replace the Chevalier's keys in the pocket from which he had taken them, and to withdraw, smiling blandly, leaving the scoundrel on the couch to sleep surrounded by the innumerable evidences of the carouse which had sent him to sleep.
He had looted the cellars of princes—but the loot had achieved its own revenge.
TEN minutes later the partners, with Sing hovering in the background, were standing beside a table in their own house—a furnished place rented for their seaside sojourn. Facing them were the lady Sonya and her little Michael—a handsome couple, with the dawn of their coming happiness already clear to be seen upon their faces.
Upon the table between the four was piled that which the Brass-Clumber combination had retrieved from the strongroom of the Bolshevist traitor.
It was a goodly haul, consisting mainly of jewelry, wonderful jewelry. There were about a dozen ropes of pearls worth an enormous sum, and some amazing diamonds and emeralds. Two small crowns, several tiaras, a number of bracelets, and rings in profusion. From many of the pieces gems had been torn out of their setting, leaving unsightly gaps. In one of the crowns, for instance, there was only one big diamond left. Many of the things were twisted and bent; quite a number of the pearls were broken; and—even the hard-bitten partners thrilled at this—more than one of the articles had the unmistakable brown stain of dried blood upon them.
The Honorable John picked up a diamond tiara that was terribly twisted and stained.
"If that thing could speak, hey?" he said, very seriously. "What poor woman was killed by these Bolshevist hyenas for sake of that?"
Michael gently took the tiara from his big hands.
"By a curious coincidence," he said in a voice that vibrated strangely, "monsieur has selected for his example a jewel which belonged to—my mother."
His eyes blazed in his white face as he spoke. He stared at the heap upon the table that glittered with fierce hot jets of rainbow flame, and drew out a bracelet.
"In the year nineteen hundred and fourteen this was presented by the Grand Duchess Tatiana to my sister," he said again with an awful stony tranquillity. "On her twentieth birthday!"
Two hunting knives, with jeweled hilts, their steel blades inlaid with gold, also he set aside.
"These were my father's knives," he said.
The Honorable John half turned. The tragedy of it was disturbing him.
"I don't know that you need us here for a little," he said. "We'll be in the next room. But we'd like you to go carefully through those things and take what you feel you have a right to—you and Mademoiselle Sonya, here."
He glanced at his partner, as he continued: "If it's all yours, or was once your family's, take it all."
The Colonel nodded heavily, and they went out.
"They want to be in London tonight," said the Honorable John. "And as there are no more trains, you'd better run them up in the car, Sing. So get what you want to eat and fill up with petrol."
SING disappeared. He had a seventy-mile each-way run before him, but was not one of his master's names for him "Ever-Ready?" It was all in the day's work.
When the partners had returned to their strange guests, the heap of jewels had been divided into two, nearly of equal size.
"Which heap contains the property of your and Mademoiselle Sonya's people?" asked the Honorable John, and put a large leather dispatch-case on the table. "That one? Good. We'll pack those in here." The Colonel layered the big case with cotton wool and began carefully to pack the things away.
"And now is there anything else you recognize as belonging to any friends—in the past, monsieur?" inquired the Honorable John.
The girl touched one or two things, and Michael indicated others. The girl was weeping openly.
"We will pack these things with yours, then," said the Honorable John. "For you're more likely to be able to restore them to their owners if they have survived, than we are."
He passed them to the Colonel, busy at the dispatch-case. For a moment he stared at the diminished heap in silence. Then, carefully, he pushed out with his forefinger an object the sight of which contracted his throat. It was a beautiful little thing, exquisitely made of coral, ivory and mother-of-pearl. There were tiny gold bells upon it. A baby's rattle! On the handle was engraved a miniature crown.
"We—my partner and I—would like you to have this too, mademoiselle," said the Honorable Joan gently. "Yon see—we don't understand that sort of thing—except that it hurts to see it among these other things."
Sonya took it.
"Ah, monsieur," she said, caught her breath, and said no more.
The Honorable John hesitated a moment, then swept fee remainder of the heap carelessly into a drawer.
It was worth fifty thousand pounds as it stood.
"Better there than in some Bolshevist's safe, monsieur, hey?" he demanded.
Michael bowed and replied:
"If it were possible for those poor victims who once wore the jewels to decide it, they would agree with monsieur—as I do."
"And I also," added the girl.
The lock of tbe dispatch-case clicked, and the Colonel handed it to the Russian, as Sing appeared at the door to say the cat was ready.
THE eyes of the, girl were dark-ringed with strain and fatigue, but she and her lover were eager to go, and the partners, understanding, made no attempt to keep them; nor would they listen to more than a few words of thanks.
"No, no—not at all, my dear—nothing more than any gentleman would do," demurred the Honorable John awkwardly. Go now and—er—live happy ever afterward, both of you. Glad to have helped —hey, Colonel?"
"Sure, sure," agreed his partner.
But Michael leaned through the window as the big car crept forward, and his eyes gleamed coldly in the light of the moon.
"The knives, monsieur, will return," he said sibilantly, "to those from whom we have taken them tonight!"
The partners stared after the. car. "Now, what did he mean by that?" demanded the Honorable John. But in his heart he knew.
TWO days later they returned to town.
The man Araseff arrived at Testmouth on the same day. But whether the two traitors ever discovered their loss neither the Honorable John nor his partner ever knew—for late that night both Araseff and D'Abrinoff were found dead in the garden of Cliffcrest—each with a big hunting knife, its hilt incrusted with gems, its blade inlaid with gold, driven deep in his throat.
It was proved that none of the servants of the house could have been guilty, and no clues were forthcoming. Months later the partners read in a newspaper that it had been found that one of the knives had belonged to a highly placed Russian noble who with his entire family had been killed by the Bolshevists. Consequently—added the report—the discovery of the ownership of the knife shed no light upon an affair which must ever remain a dark and impenetrable mystery.
But it was no mystery to the partners. Had not Michael told them that he would return the knives?
Nor did it interfere with the patient liquidation of the jewels Which they were extending, over a long period of time. Neither of them were what they themselves would have termed "particular" men, but nevertheless it had taken them some time to make up their minds to retain the jewels. For the only alternative to keeping them uselessly locked up seemed to be to send them anonymously to the Government, a thing neither of them were in the least degree likely to do.
And as the Honorable John truthfully said—.
"We're crooks right enough, Colonel—damned pooks, you may say, but not crooked enough to keep these things if any of the poor souls who were the real owners of them were alive to take them. But they are not,—through no" fault of ours,—and if they had any voice in the matter I think that, as that lad Michael said, they prefer us to have them rather than any Bolshevist. So that's that. Crooks we certainly are—but thank God we haven't sunk to the Bolshevist stage yet. That's what, Colonel."
The Colonel nodded agreement, and they acted accordingly.
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
Go to Home Page
This work is out of copyright in countries with a copyright
period of 70 years or less, after the year of the author's death.
If it is under copyright in your country of residence,
do not download or redistribute this file.
Original content added by RGL (e.g., introductions, notes,
RGL covers) is proprietary and protected by copyright.