The Sword of Islam Page 21

  “Take your hands off me, you damned German spy!” he cried, thoroughly enraged at this indignity. He wrenched himself from those compelling hands and sprang away, round the table. With an oath Kauffmann turned to follow him; and then the thing happened.

  By purest chance Elphinstone’s hand had found the wicked little life-preserver that lay among the professor’s papers. Fierce now as a cornered rat he snatched it up, and in his blind unreflecting fury brought it down upon the head of his aggressor.

  There was an ominous squelching crack. Kauffmann’s hands were jerked violently up to the level of his shoulders with the mechanical action of an automaton, and he collapsed in a heap at Elphinstone’s feet.

  Standing over him, still clutching the weapon, Elphinstone apostrophised the fallen man, breathlessly, almost hysterically.

  “That will teach you better manners, you dirty spy. That will teach you to keep your hands to yourself. If you thought I was going to let myself be man-handled by a . . .”

  He broke off. There was something ominous about the utter stillness of the body and the red viscous fluid slowly oozing from his head and spreading to the Persian carpet.

  “Kauffmann!” His voice shrilled up and cracked. “Kauff­mann!”

  In shuddering, slobbering terror he went down beside the professor, and shook him.

  “Kauffmann!”

  The body sank limply down again as Elphinstone relaxed his grip of it and it lay still and unresponsive as before. A sudden horrible realisation was borne in upon the young man’s senses. With a whimpering sound he shrank back, still kneeling. “Oh my God!” he gasped, and covered his white face with trembling hands.

  The next moment he almost screamed aloud, for somewhere in the room behind him something — someone — had moved. He whipped round in a frenzy of terror.

  The heavy curtains masking the French windows had parted, and on the near side of them stood now a slight man in a shabby suit of tweeds, a faded scarf round his neck, an old tweed cap on his head. He had a keen, hungry-looking hatchet face and dark eyes which were considering Elphinstone and his work with almost inhuman emotionlessness.

  For a long moment they stared at each other in silence. Then the newcomer spoke, his voice so quiet and self-contained as to sound almost mocking.

  “Well?” he asked. “What are you going to do about it?”

  Elphinstone sprang up. “Who are you?” he asked mechanically.

  “Just a burglar,” said the other, indicating the window behind him, from which a square of glass had been cut.

  “A thief!”

  The burglar let the curtains fall back into place, and moved forward soundlessly. “You needn’t be so superior,” said he. “I’m not a murderer, anyhow.”

  “A murd . . . ! My God! He’s not . . . he can’t be dead!”

  “Not if his head is made of cast iron.”

  There was something almost revolting in the cynicism with which the newcomer accepted the fact. He knelt beside the professor, and made a swift examination.

  “Dead as mutton,” he pronounced nonchalantly. “You’ve smashed his skull.”

  Elphinstone sank limply against the desk, and clutched it to steady himself. Breath seemed to fail him.

  “I didn’t mean it,” he whimpered. “I swear I didn’t. I . . . I did it in self-defence. You must have seen how it happened. It was an accident.”

  “Oh, I saw how it happened all right,” the other answered, rising. “But you don’t suppose my evidence would help either of us very much. This may be very nasty for you.”

  The burglar met the stare of the young man’s dilating eyes, and saw purpose suddenly kindle in them, saw the hand that still held the life-preserver tighten its grip. But he was swifter of purpose and action than Elphinstone, and on the instant the latter found himself contemplating the nozzle of a pistol.

  “Drop that weapon! Drop it at once,” the burglar commanded, and there was steel in the voice that had been so languid.

  Elphinstone’s nerveless hand let fall the life-preserver.

  “You didn’t think . . .”

  “No. But you might have been tempted, and one broken skull is enough in one evening.” He slipped his pistol back into his pocket. “Well?” he asked again. “Have you made up your mind what you’re going to do about it?”

  “Do about it?” Elphinstone echoed dully. There was a gleam of perspiration on his brow. “You’ll not give me away,” he was beginning to plead, then suddenly he realised the situation as it affected the other, and from that derived a confidence that rendered him aggressive. “You daren’t,” he announced. “It would look pretty black against you, my friend. If anyone were to find us now, which way do you think appearances would point? Who’s to say that it wasn’t you who killed him?”

  “No one — unless you do.”

  “Exactly,” said Elphinstone, and he almost sneered. He had fancied that the burglar winced under that last question of his, as well he might. Far from being disastrous, it began to be clear to him that the advent of the thief was providential; that he, himself, was entirely master of the situation. In this comforting persuasion he recovered his nerve almost as swiftly as he had lost it.

  “You had better not attempt to keep me here, or it may be the worse for you. You can get away as you came, and there’s nothing to prevent you taking whatever you came for. There’s no one in the house. His man is away ill.”

  “I know. I informed myself of that before I came.”

  “Very well, then. He’s got a collection of jewels in there that is worth a fortune,” and Elphinstone pointed to the blind face of the mahogany press standing between the bookcases.

  “I know,” said the burglar again. “That’s what I came for.”

  “Then let me get out of this, and you can help yourself.”

  “Who’s keeping you?” the other asked him in that uncannily cool, matter-of-fact voice of his. “I’m certainly not. In your place I should have cleared already. So long as you don’t interfere with my job I don’t care whether you go or stay.”

  He swung round with that, crossed to the press, turned the key, and threw open the double doors, revealing a safe immediately behind them. He knelt down to examine the lock. Then from one of his pockets he took a chamois-skin bundle. He unrolled it and placed it on the floor beside him, displaying an array of bright steel implements. From another pocket he took a bunch of skeleton keys, and proceeded to make a selection.

  For a moment, Elphinstone stood watching the man’s cool, expert address in amazement. At last he roused himself, shuddered again as his eye fell upon that thing on the floor, and he sidled away towards the door.

  “I think I’ll be going,” he said. With his hand on the knob he checked. “Someone may have seen me come in, and may see me going out again.”

  “That’ll be all right,” said the burglar, without turning. “They’ll know nothing about this until morning.” By a jerk of the thumb over his shoulder he indicated the body. “And it’ll look like burglary by then. It’ll look uncommonly like burglary by the time I’m through. You needn’t make a secret of having visited him. No one can say that this didn’t happen after you had left. It will certainly look like it. You’re quite safe. Good night!”

  “Ah!” said Elphinstone, and on that he went out.

  To his terrified, conscience-stricken imagination the night seemed alive with watching eyes. He dared not shut the front door of that house lest the bang should draw attention to his departure. Leaving it ajar, he slunk fearfully away, and as he went his panic so grew upon him that by the time he had turned the corner into Piccadilly he was persuaded that by leaving as he had done he had determined his own doom, walked into some trap unperceived by himself but quite clear to that incredibly cool burglar whom he had left behind. Already he saw himself arraigned and sentenced for the murder of Kauffmann. A sick giddiness of terror overtook him; his teeth chattered and his legs so trembled that he was scarcely able to walk. And then sud
denly, upon the utter stillness of the night, rang a loud metallic sound that brought him shuddering to a standstill. It was the ring of a police inspector’s baton, striking the pavement to call the constable of the beat.

  For a moment Elphinstone’s disordered mind connected the summons with himself and the thing he had left behind him. Then inspiration flashed upon his mind. There was a clear course that by definitely fastening the guilt elsewhere would make him absolutely safe. That burglar must be caught in the act by the police.

  He ran forward in the direction whence the sound had reached him, and a moment later he was breathlessly delivering himself to a stalwart inspector.

  “. . . Over there, in Park Gardens,” he heard himself saying, “a house is being burgled. I saw a man entering a window from the balcony over the porch.”

  Two constables joined them as he was speaking. There was a brief exchange of question and answer, and then the four of them went back together at the double. Elphinstone pointed out the house, and the inspector was intrigued to find the door ajar.

  “Looks as if we were too late already,” he commented, and ordering his men to go up with Elphinstone, himself remained there to keep an eye upon the street.

  They went softly upstairs to the study, burst into it and surprised the burglar still at his work. The safe was standing open, and there was a litter of its contents on the floor; among these were half-a-dozen small showcases containing the collection of jewels of which Kauffmann had been so proud. One of the constables shouted to the inspector below before the pair of them sprang at the burglar and overpowered him. Even as they did so, and the man offered no resistance, Elphinstone moving round the table almost fell over the professor’s body.

  The policemen heard his outcry; they saw him reel back, ap­palled. He was really acting very well.

  “Look here!” he called to them, and dropped on his knees beside the dead man. “Lord! He’s dead! Dead!” He looked up at them blankly. “We’re too late,” he said.

  “We’ve got the murderer, anyhow,” he was gruffly answered by one of the constables, who, leaving the handcuffed man in the care of his colleague, came round himself to view the body at closer quarters.

  Elphinstone looked at the burglar, and the burglar’s eyes met the glance. The fellow appeared to have lost none of his cool masterfulness and none of his cynicism, for as his eyes met Elphin­stone’s, his lip curled in contempt of the fellow who had made him a defenceless scapegoat.

  “I had the idea,” he said without resentment, “that this was what you would do.”

  And then the inspector came in. “What’s this?” he asked as he entered.

  “Murder,” cried Elphinstone stridently, “that’s what it is — robbery and murder. And there’s the murderer. Caught absolutely red-handed. Caught in the very act.”

  “In the act of burgling — not murdering,” was all the prisoner said, quite gently.

  The inspector stooped over the body. He met the eye of the constable who had been making an examination, and the subordinate nodded with ominous eloquence.

  “A clear case,” said the inspector. “Fetch him along, and . . .”

  The inspector looked full at the burglar, and quite suddenly he checked, stiffened, and stood to attention.

  “Beg pardon, sir,” said he with a quite extraordinary deference. “Didn’t know as how it was you. What’s this, sir?” indicating the body. “Had an accident?”

  “No. It’s murder all right as that fellow says, and he should know, for he’s the murderer. It was he who killed Professor Kauff­mann. I saw the whole thing from behind those curtains. I gave him his chance to get away. Very wrong of me, of course; but I didn’t want any publicity on my own methods. Besides,” he added slyly, “I thought it very likely he would come back with the police, and so save me all trouble. He would naturally imagine that a burglar could have nothing to say in his own defence.”

  “I see, Mr. Scott-Drummond. Very good sir,” was the inspector’s respectful answer, and he came forward with quick concern to remove the handcuffs from the prisoner.

  It was then that Elphinstone roused himself at last from his horrified amazement.

  “Scott-Drummond! Scott-Drummond!” he repeated, foolishly.

  The burglar stooped to pick up a slender case of japanned tin, which he had dropped when the constables seized him. The lid had been wrenched off and the edges of a sheaf of blue tracing papers protruded.

  “We had good reason,” he said, “to suspect Professor Kauff­mann of being an agent of the German Government, and I came to get hold of evidence. I’ve found what I was looking for — more even than I expected — so I’ll be going.”

  He glanced across at the stricken Elphinstone standing limply between the two constables.

  “You’d better take that fellow to Vine Street

  ,” he said quietly. “I’ll forward my report. Good night, inspector.”