The Bulldog Drummond MEGAPACK ®. Sapper
the clergyman indifferently, at the same time placing the bottle of whisky and the glasses on the table. “If you imagine that I am capable of interfering with an unopened bottle of Johnny Walker, obtained from the cellars of the Ritz, it would be well not to join me.” He was carefully removing the tinfoil as he spoke, and once again the strange muzzy feeling swept over Drummond. He felt as if things had suddenly become unreal—as if he was dreaming. His vision seemed blurred, and then for the second time it passed away, leaving only a strange mental confusion. What was he doing in this room? Who was this benevolent old clergyman drawing the cork out of a bottle of whisky?
With an effort he pulled himself together. It must be the heat or something, he reflected, and he must keep his brain clear. Perhaps a whisky-and-soda would help. After all, there could be no danger in drinking from a bottle which he had seen opened under his very eyes.
“Do you know, Theo,” he remarked, “I think I will change my mind and have a whisky-and-soda.”
His voice sounded strange to his ears; and he wondered if the others noticed anything. But apparently not; the clergyman merely nodded briefly, and remarked, “Say when.”
“When,” said Drummond, with a foolish sort of laugh. It was a most extraordinary thing, but he couldn’t focus his eyes; there were two glasses on the table and two clergymen splashing in soda from two siphons. Surely he wasn’t going to faint; bad thing to faint when he was alone with Peterson.
He took a gulp at his drink and suddenly began to talk—foolishly and idiotically.
“Nice room, Carl, old lad…Never expected meet you again: certainly not in nice room…Wrote letter paper after poor old Latter went mad. Drew you—drew badger. Send badger mad too.”
His voice trailed away, and he sat there blinking stupidly. Everything was confused, and his tongue seemed weighted with lead. He reached out again for his glass—or tried to—and his arm refused to move. And suddenly out of the jumble of thoughts in his brain there emerged the one damning certainty that somehow or other he had been trapped and drugged. He gave a hoarse, inarticulate cry, and struggled to rise to his feet, but it was useless; his legs and arms felt as if they were bound to the chair by iron bands. And in the mist that swam before his eyes he saw the mocking faces of the clergyman and his daughter.
“It seems to have acted most excellently,” remarked the Reverend Theodosius, and Drummond found he could hear quite normally; also his sight was improving; things in the room seemed steadier. And his mind was becoming less confused—he could think again. But to move or to speak was utterly impossible; all he could do was to sit and watch and rage inwardly at having been such a fool as to trust Peterson.
But that gentleman appeared in no hurry. He was writing with a gold pencil on a letter pad, and every now and then he paused and smiled thoughtfully. At length he seemed satisfied, and crossed to the bathroom door.
“We are ready now,” Drummond heard him say, and he wondered what was going to happen next. To turn his head was impossible; his range of vision was limited by the amount he could turn his eyes. And then, to his amazement, he heard his own voice speaking from somewhere behind him—not, perhaps, quite so deep, but an extraordinary good imitation which would have deceived nine people out of ten when they could not see the speaker. And then he heard Peterson’s voice again mentioning the telephone, and he realised what they were going to do.
“I want you,” Peterson was saying, “to send this message that I have written down to that number—using this gentleman’s voice.”
They came into his line of vision, and the new arrival stared at him curiously. But he asked no questions—merely took the paper and read it through carefully. Then he stepped over to the telephone, and took off the receiver. And, helplessly impotent, Drummond sat in his chair and heard the following message spoken in his own voice:
“Is that you, Peter, old bird? I’ve made the most unholy bloomer. This old bloke Theodosius isn’t Carl at all. He’s a perfectly respectable pillar of the Church.”
And then apparently Darrell said something, and Peterson, who was listening through the second ear-piece, whispered, urgently to the man.
“Phyllis,” he went on—”she’s as right as rain! The whole thing is a boss shot of the first order.…”
Drummond made another stupendous effort to rise, and for a moment everything went blank. Dimly he heard his own voice still talking into the instrument, but he only caught a word here and there, and then it ceased, and he realised that the man had left the room. It was Peterson’s voice close by him that cleared his brain again.
“I trust you approve of the way our single has started. Captain Drummond,” he remarked pleasantly. “Your friend Peter, I am glad to say, is more than satisfied, and has announced his intention of dining with some female charmer. Also he quite understands why your wife has gone into the country—you heard that bit, I hope, about her sick cousin?—and he realises that you are joining her.”
And suddenly the pleasant voice ceased, and the clergyman continued in a tone of cold, malignant fury.
“You rat! You damned interfering young swine! Now that you’re helpless I don’t mind admitting that I am the man you knew as Carl Peterson, but I’m not going to make the mistake he made a second time. I underestimated you. Captain Drummond. I left things to that fool Lakington. I treated you as a blundering young ass, and I realised too late that you weren’t such a fool as you looked. This time I am paying you the compliment of treating you as a dangerous enemy, and a clever man. I trust you are nattered.”
He turned as the door opened, and the man who had telephoned came in with two others. One was a great, powerful-looking man who might have been a prize-fighter; the other was a lean, swarthy-skinned foreigner, and both of them looked unpleasant customers. And Hugh wondered what was going to happen next, while his eyes rolled wildly from side to side as if in search of some way of escape. It was like some ghastly nightmare when one is powerless to move before some dreadful figment of the brain, only to be saved at the last moment by waking up. Only in Hugh’s case he was awake already, and the dream was reality.
He saw the men leave the room, and then Peterson came over to him again. First he took the little bag of diamonds out of his pocket, and it struck Hugh that though he had seen the other’s hand go into his pocket, he had felt nothing. He watched Peterson and the girl as they examined the stones; he watched Peterson as he locked them up in a steel dispatch-case. And then Peterson disappeared out of his range of vision. He was conscious that he was near him—just behind him—and the horror of the nightmare increased. It had been better when they were talking; at least then he could see them. But now, with both of them out of sight—hovering round the back of his chair, perhaps—and without a sound in the room save the faint hum of the traffic outside, the strain was getting unbearable.
And then another thought came to add to his misery. If they killed him—and they intended to, he was certain—what would happen to Phyllis? They’d got her too, somewhere; what were they going to do to her? Again he made a superhuman effort to rise; again he failed so much as to move his finger. And for a while he raved and blasphemed mentally. It was hopeless, utterly hopeless; he was caught like a rat in a trap.
And then he began to think coherently again. After all, they couldn’t kill him here in the Ritz. You can’t have dead men lying about in your room in an hotel. And they would have to move him some time; they couldn’t leave him sitting there. How were they going to get him out? He couldn’t walk, and to carry him out as he was would be impossible. Too many of the staff below knew him by sight.
Suddenly Peterson came into view again. He was in his shirt sleeves and was smoking a cigar, and Hugh watched him sorting out papers. He seemed engrossed in the matter, and paid no more attention to the helpless figure at the table than he did to the fly on the window. At length he completed his task, and having closed the dispatch-case with a snap, he rose and stood facing Hugh.
“Enjoying yourself?” he remarked. “Wondering what is going to happen? Wondering where dear Phyllis is?” He gave a short laugh. “Excellent drug that, isn’t