The Victorian Rogues MEGAPACK ®. Морис Леблан
were portable.
“Hulloa!” he cried cheerily. “What are you doing to-day—eh?”
“Well,” I said, with apparent indifference, “I’m just going to look round the car before breakfast. Perhaps I’ll go for a run later on. The roads are still in perfect condition.”
“Then I’ll go with you,” was his prompt reply. “My wife has a bad headache, and won’t go out to-day. Gibbs, too, is full of business in the town. So let’s go together.”
Instantly I saw the ruse. He had been awaiting me, and did not mean that I should go for a run unaccompanied.
“Certainly,” I replied promptly. “Shall you be ready in half an hour?”
“I’m ready now. I’ve had my coffee.” His response was, to say the least, disconcerting. How was I to get rid of him? My only chance lay in remaining perfectly calm and indifferent. A witness to testify to my identity was, no doubt, on his way out from England, and the two detectives were holding me up until his arrival.
Together we walked to the car, and for nearly half an hour I was occupied in filling the petrol-tank and putting everything in order for a long and hard journey. A breakdown would probably mean my arrest and deportation to Bow Street. My only safety lay in flight. During the night I had studied the road-book with infinite care, and decided to make a dash out of Dresden along the Elbe bank as far as Meissen, and thence by Altenburg across to Erfurt. Upton’s self-invitation to go with me had, however, entirely upset my plans.
At last I returned to my room, obtained my motor-cap, coat, and goggles, and, having started the engine, got up at the wheel. My unwelcome friend swung himself up beside me, and we glided out into the Prager-strasse and through the fine capital of Saxony.
My friend, in his smart motor coat and cap, certainly gave no outward sign of his real profession. Surely no one would have taken him to be an emissary of the Metropolitan Police. As he sat beside me he chatted merrily, for he possessed a keen sense of humour, and it must have struck him that the present position was really amusing—from his point of view.
In half an hour we were out upon a fine level road running on the left bank of the Elbe. It was a bright sunny autumn morning, and, travelling swiftly as we were, it was delightfully exhilarating. Passing through old-world Meissen, with its picturesque gabled houses, we continued on another fifteen miles to a small place called Riesa, and when about three miles farther on I summoned courage to carry out a scheme over which, during the run, I had been deeply pondering.
We were in a lonely part of the road, hidden by the long row of poplars lining the broad winding river. On the one side were the trees, and on the other high sloping vine-lands. The road curved both before and behind us, therefore we were well concealed.
Pulling up suddenly, I said—
“There’s something wrong. One cylinder is not working—sparking-plug broken, I suppose.”
To allow me to descend he got down. Then having unlocked the “bonnet” and pretended to fiddle with the plug, I again relocked it. Afterwards I felt the axles all round, saw to the tyres, and, having watched my opportunity, while he was at that moment standing with his back to me, his face turned towards the river, I suddenly sprang into the wheel and drew off.
In an instant, with a loud shout, “No, you don’t!” he sprang forward upon the step and raised himself into the seat he had occupied. Quick as thought, I whipped my revolver out with my left hand, and, guiding the car with my right, cried—
“I know you, Mr. Upton. Get down, or I’ll shoot you!”
His face blanched, for he had no idea I was armed.
“Get down—quick!” I ordered. “I shan’t ask you again.”
The car was gathering speed, and I saw that if he attempted to drop off he would probably be hurt. He glanced at the road and then at me.
“You won’t escape so easily as this, Mr. Ewart!” he cried. “We want you for several jewel robberies, you know. Don’t you think you’d better go quietly? If you shoot me you’ll only hang for it. Now do you think that’s really worth while? Is such a game worth the candle?”
Without replying, I slowed down again.
“I tell you to get off this car—otherwise you must take the consequences,” was my cool response. Those were terribly exciting moments, and how I remained so calm I cannot tell. My whole future depended upon my extrication from that impasse. Perhaps that is why my wits had, in that moment, become so sharpened.
“I shall stay with you,” was the police-officer’s defiant reply, as, with a sudden movement, he grabbed my left wrist in an endeavour to wrest the weapon from my grasp. Next second I had stopped the car, pressed down the brake, and thus had both my hands free.
In a moment the struggle became desperate. He fought for his life, for he saw that, now he had defied me, I meant what I threatened. No doubt he was physically stronger than myself, and at first he had the advantage; but not for long, because, resorting to a ruse taught me long ago by a man who was a professional wrestler at the music-halls, I succeeded in turning the muzzle of the weapon into his face.
If I had liked, I could have pulled the trigger and blown half his head away. Yet, although I had become the accomplice of a daring gang of jewel-thieves, and though one of them had given me the weapon to use in case of need, I had neither desire nor intention of becoming a murderer.
For fully six or seven minutes we were locked in deadly embrace. Upton, time after time, tried to turn the weapon upon me, and so compel me to give it up under threats of death. In this, however, he was unsuccessful, though more than once he showered at me fierce imprecations.
He had his thin, sinewy hands in my collar, and was pressing his bony knuckles into my throat, until I was half throttled, when, of a sudden, by dint of an effort of which I had never believed myself capable, I gave his arm a twist which nearly dislocated his shoulder and forced him to release his hold. I still had the revolver tightly clenched in my right hand, for I had now succeeded in changing it from my left, and at last slipped it back into my hip-pocket, leaving both hands free. Then, in our desperate struggle, he tried to force me backwards over the steering-wheel, and would have done so had I not been able to trip him unexpectedly. In a second I had flung my whole weight upon him and sent him clutching at the air over the splashboard, and so across the “bonnet” to the ground.
In a moment I restarted the car, but not before he had risen and remounted upon the step.
“You shan’t get away!” he cried. “Even if you leave me here you’ll be arrested by the German police before night. They already have your description.”
“Enough!” I cried savagely, again whipping out my weapon. “Get down—or I’ll shoot!”
“Shoot, then!” he shouted defiantly.
“Take that instead!” I replied, and, with the butt-end of the weapon, I struck him full between the eyes, causing him to fall back into the road, where he lay like a log.
Without a second glance at him, I allowed the car to gather speed, and in a few moments was running across a flat, level plain at quite fifty miles an hour. Upton lay insensible, and the longer he remained so the farther afield I should be able to get without information being sent before me.
Mine was now a dash for liberty. Having gone twenty miles, I pulled up, and, unfastening one of the lockers within the car, I drew out the complete disguise which Bindo always kept there for emergencies. I had purposely halted in a side road, which apparently only led to some fields, and, having successfully transformed myself into a grey-bearded man of about fifty-five, I drew out a large tin of dark-red enamel and a brush, and in a quarter of an hour had transformed the pale-blue body into a dark-red one. So, within half an hour, both myself and the car were utterly disguised, even to the identification-plates, both back and front. The police would be on the look-out for a pale-blue car, driven by a moustached young man in a leather-peaked motor-cap, while they would only see