The Victorian Rogues MEGAPACK ®. Морис Леблан
congenial companion. Each afternoon we all went out for a run, and each evening, after dining, we went to the theatre.
On the fourth day after Mr. Gibbs’s arrival a messenger brought me a note which, to my surprise, I found to be from Blythe, who directed me to meet him in secret in a certain café in the Grosse Garten at eleven o’clock that night.
Then I knew that something further had been planned.
In accordance with the request, I went to the café at the hour appointed. It was crowded, but I soon discovered him, smartly dressed, and seated at a table in the corner. After we had finished our beer I followed him out into the park, where, halting suddenly, he said—
“Ewart, you’ve placed yourself in a pretty fine predicament!”
“What do you mean?” I asked in surprise.
“Well, I saw you yesterday afternoon driving down the Prager-strasse with the very gentleman to whom you ought to give the widest berth.”
“You mean Gibbs?”
“I mean that cunning old fox, Inspector Dyer, of Scotland Yard.”
“What!” I gasped. “Dyer—is that the famous Dyer?”
“He is. I once, to my cost, had occasion to meet him, and it’s hardly likely that I’d forget his face. I saw you coming along with him, and you could have knocked me down with a feather.”
“But I—well, I really can’t believe that he’s a detective,” I declared, utterly incredulous.
“Believe it, or disbelieve it—it’s a fact, I tell you. You’ve been given away somehow, and Dyer has now just got you in his palm.”
Briefly I explained how I had met Upton, and how Mr. Gibbs had been introduced.
“Upton may not be what he pretends, you know,” Blythe replied. “They want us very badly at Scotland Yard, and that’s why the affair has been given over to Dyer. He’s the man who generally does the travelling on the Continent. But you know him well enough by reputation, of course. Everyone does.”
Mr. Gibbs’s intense interest in the car and its maker was thus accounted for. I saw how completely I had been taken in, and how entirely I was now in the renowned detective’s hands. He might already have been round to the garage, unlocked the “bonnet” with a false key, and seen the name “Napier” stamped upon the engine.
How, I wondered, had he been able to trace me? No doubt the fact that we had shipped the car across from Parkeston to Hamburg was well known to Scotland Yard, yet since that night it had undergone two or three transformations which had entirely disguised it. I was rapidly growing a moustache, too, and had otherwise altered my personal appearance since I posed as Bindo’s chauffeur in Scarborough.
“The Count, who is lying low in a small hotel in Düsseldorf, wants you to meet him with the car in Turin in a fortnight’s time—at the Hotel Europe. A Russian princess is staying there—and we have a plan. But it seems very probable that you’ll be waiting extradition to Bow Street if you don’t make a bold move, and slip out of Dyer’s hands.”
“Yes,” I said thoughtfully. “If Gibbs is really Dyer himself, then, I fear, that although I’ve been discreet—for I make a point of never telling my business to strangers—yet he has more than a suspicion that the car is the same as the one I drove daily on the Esplanade at Scarborough.”
“And if he has a suspicion he has probably wired to England for one of the witnesses to come out and identify you—Gilling himself, most probably.”
“Then we’re in a most complete hole!” I declared, drawing a long face.
“Absolutely. What are you going to do?”
“What can I do?”
“Get out of it—and at once,” replied Blythe coolly. “If Dyer discovers and tries to prevent your escape, make a bold fight for it,” and from his hip-pocket he drew a serviceable-looking plated revolver, and handed it to me with the remark that it was fully loaded.
I saw that my position was one of peril. Even now, Dyer might have watched me keeping this appointment with Blythe.
“I shall leave for Leipzig in an hour,” my friend said. “You’d better return to the hotel, get the car, and make a dash for it.”
“Why should I get the car?” I queried “Why not slip away at once?”
“If you tried to you’d probably be ‘pinched’ at the station. Dyer is an artful bird, you know. Once up with you, he isn’t likely to lose sight of you for very long.”
As he was speaking I recognised, seated at a table before the café some distance away, my friend Upton, idly smoking a cigar, and apparently unconscious of my proximity.
“That’s all right,” declared Blythe, when I had pointed him out. “It proves two things—first, that this Mr. Upton is really one of the younger men from the Yard, and, secondly, that Dyer has sent him after you to watch where you went to-night. That’s fortunate, for if Dyer himself had come it’s certain he would have recognised me. I gave him a rather nasty jag when he arrested me four years ago, so it isn’t very likely he forgets. And now let’s part. At all hazards, get away from Dresden. But go back to the hotel first, so as to disarm suspicion. When you are safe, wire to the address in the Tottenham Court Road. So long.”
And without another word the well-dressed jewel-thief turned on his heels, and disappeared in the darkness of the leafy avenue.
My feelings were the reverse of happy as I made my way back to the Europäischer Hof. To obtain the car that night would be to arouse suspicion that I had discovered Mr. Gibbs’s identity. My safety lay in getting away quietly and without any apparent haste. Indeed, when I gained my room and calmly thought it all over, I saw that it would be policy to wait until next day, when I could obtain the car from the garage as usual, and slip away before the crafty pair were aware of my absence.
The reason they had not applied to the German police to arrest me could be but one. They had sent to London for someone to come and identify me. This person might arrive at any moment. Dyer had been in Dresden already four days; therefore, every minute’s delay was dangerous.
After long and careful consideration, I resolved to wait until the morrow. No sleep, however, came to my eyes that night, as you may well imagine. All the scandal of arrest, trial, and imprisonment rose before me as the long night hours dragged on. I lit the stove in my room, and carefully destroyed everything that might give a possible clue to my identity, and then sat at the window, watching for day to break.
Surely Dyer and Upton had achieved a very clever piece of detective work to discover me as they had. I had done my utmost, as I thought, to efface my identity and to give the car an entirely different appearance from that which it had presented at Scarborough. The only manner in which I had been “given away” was, I believed, by means of some English five-pound notes which Bindo had sent me from Stettin, and which I had cashed in Dresden. If these had been stolen—as most probably they had been—then it would well account for the sudden appearance of Mr. Upton and his very charming wife, who had come holiday-making to Germany. Upton had, in his turn, sent information to his superior officer, Inspector Dyer, who had come out to see for himself.
What an awful fool I had been! How completely I had fallen into the cunningly baited trap!
At last the grey dawn came, spreading to a bright autumn morning. The roads outside were dry and dusty. I meant, in a few hours, to make a breakneck dash out of Dresden, and to hide somewhere in the country. To attempt to escape by rail would be folly. But if either man was on the watch and invited himself to go for a run with me? What then?
I grasped the weapon in my pocket and set my teeth hard, recollecting Blythe’s words.
At eight I ordered my coffee, and, drinking it in feverish haste, went down to the rear of the hotel where the garage was situated. While crossing the courtyard, however, I met Upton,