"If you are a German, as you seem to be," Desmond went on, "then I tell you I shall never have guessed it until this interview between us. But a man who can murder a defenceless old man and torture a young girl and then propose to sell his pals to a British officer at the price of that officer's honor can only be a Hun! And you seem to be a pretty fine specimen of your race!"

Strangwise mastered his rising pa.s.sion by an obvious effort; but his face was evil as he spoke.

"I put that Malplaquet woman off by appealing to her avarice," he said, "I've promised her and Bellward a thousand pounds apiece as their share of my reward for recovering the jewel. I only have to say the word, Okewood, and your number's up! And you may as well know that Bellward will try his hand on you before he kills you.

If that girl had known where the Star of Poland was, Bellward would have had it out of her! Three times a day he's put her into the hypnotic sleep. I warn you, you won't like the interrogatory!"

The door flew open and Bellward came in. He went eagerly to Strangwise.

"Well, have you got it!" he demanded.

"Have you anything further to say, Desmond?" asked Strangwise.

"Perhaps you would care to reconsider your decisions?"

Desmond shook his head.

"You've had my answer!" he said doggedly.

"Then, my friend," said Strangwise to Bellward, "after dinner you shall try your hand on this obstinate fool. But first we'll take him upstairs."

He was close beside Desmond and as he finished speaking he suddenly caught him by the throat and forced him back into the chair to which Barbara had been tethered. To struggle was useless, and Desmond suffered them to bind his arms and feet to the arms and legs of the chair. Then the two men picked him up, chair and all, and bore him from the room upstairs to the third floor. There they carried him into a dark room where they left him, turning the key in the lock as they went away.

CHAPTER XXIX. DOT AND DASH

For a long time after the retreating footsteps of Strangwise and Bellward had died away, Desmond sat listless, preoccupied with his thoughts. They were somber enough. The sinister atmosphere of the house, weighing upon him, seemed to deepen his depression.

About his own position he was not concerned at all. This is not an example of unselfishness it is simply an instance of the force of discipline which trains a man to reckon the cause as everything and himself as naught. And Desmond was haunted by the awful conviction that he had at length reached the end of his tether and that nothing could now redeem the ignominious failure he had made of his mission.

He had sacrificed Barbara Mackwayte; he had sacrificed Nur-el-Din; he had not even been clever enough to save his own skin. And Strangwise, spy and murderer, had escaped and was now free to reorganize his band after he had put Barbara and Desmond out of the way.

The thought was so unbearable that it stung Desmond into action.

Strangwise should not get the better of him, he resolved, and he had yet this brief interval of being alone in which he might devise some scheme to rescue Barbara and secure the arrest of Strangwise and his accomplices. But how?

He raised his head and looked round the room. The curtains had not been drawn and enough light came into the room from the outside to enable him to distinguish the outlines of the furniture. It was a bedroom, furnished in rather a ma.s.sive style, with some kind of thick, soft carpet into, which the feet sank.

Desmond tested his bonds. He was very skillfully tied up. He fancied that with a little manipulation he might contrive to loosen the rope round his right arm, for one of the knots had caught in the folds of his coat. The thongs round his left arm and two legs were, however, so tight that he thought he had but little chance of ridding himself of them, even should he get his right arm free; for the knots were tied at the back under the seat of the chair in such a way that he could not reach them.

He, therefore, resigned himself to conducting operations in the highly ridiculous posture in which he found himself, that is to say, with a large arm-chair attached to him, rather like a snail with its house on its back. After a certain amount of maneuvering he discovered that, by means of a kind of slow, lumbering crawl, he was able to move across the ground. It might have proved a noisy business on a parquet floor; but Desmond moved only a foot or two at a time and the pile carpet deadened the sound.

They had deposited him in his chair in the centre of the room near the big bra.s.s bedstead. After ten minutes' painful crawling he had reached the toilet table which stood in front of the window with a couple of electric candles on either side of the mirror. He moved the toilet table to one side, then b.u.mped steadily across the carpet until he had reached the window. And then he gave a little gasp of surprise.

He found himself looking straight at the window of his own bedroom at Mrs. Viljohn-Smythe's. There was no mistaking it. The electric light was burning and the curtains had not yet been drawn. He could see the black and pink eiderdown on his bed and the black lining of the chintz curtains. Then he remembered the slope of the hill. He must be in the room from which he had seen Bellward looking out.

The sight of the natty bedroom across the way moved Desmond strangely. It seemed to bring home to him for the first time the extraordinary position in which he found himself, a prisoner in a perfectly respectable suburban house in a perfectly respectable quarter of London, in imminent danger of a violent death.

He wouldn't give in without a struggle. Safety stared him in the face, separated only by a hundred yards of gra.s.s and shrub and wall. He instinctively gripped the arms of the chair to raise himself to get a better view from the window, forgetting he was bound. The ropes cut his arms cruelly and brought him back to earth.

He tested again the thongs fastening his right arm. Yes! they were undoubtedly looser than the others. He pulled and tugged and writhed and strained. Once in his struggles he crashed into the toilet table and all but upset one of the electric candles which slid to the table's very brink and was saved, as by a miracle, from falling to the floor. He resumed his efforts, but with less violence. It was in vain. Though the ropes about his right arm were fairly loose, the wrist was solidly fastened to the chair, and do what he would, he could not wrest it free. He clawed desperately with his fingers and thumb, but all in vain.

In the midst of his struggles he was arrested by the sound of whistling. Somebody in the distance outside was whistling, clearly and musically, a quaint, jingling sort of jig that struck familiarly on Desmond's ear. Somehow it reminded him of the front. It brought with it dim memory of the awakening to the early morning chill of a Nissen hut, the smell of damp earth, the whirr of aircraft soaring through the morning sky, the squeak of flutes, the roll of drums... why, it was the Grand Reveille, that ancient military air which every soldier knows.

He stopped struggling and peered cautiously out into the dusk.

The time for darkening the windows must be at hand, he thought, for in most of the houses the blinds were already drawn. Here and there, however, an oblong of yellow light showed up against the dark ma.s.s of the houses on the upper slopes of the hill. The curtains of his bedroom at Mrs. Viljohn-Smythe's were not yet drawn and the light still burned brightly above the bed.

The whistling continued with occasional interruptions as though the whistler were about some work or other. And then suddenly "Buzzer" Barling, holding something in one hand and rubbing violently with the other, stepped into the patch of light between the window and the bed in Desmond's bedroom.

Desmond's heart leaped within him. Here was a.s.sistance close at hand. Mechanically he sought to raise his hand to open the window, but an agonising twinge reminded him of his thongs. He swiftly reviewed in his mind the means of attracting the attention of the soldier opposite. Whatever he was going to do, he must do quickly; for the fact that people were beginning to darken their windows showed that it must be close on half-past six, and about seven o'clock, Barling, after putting out Desmond's things, was accustomed to go out for the evening.

Should he shout? Should he try and break the window? Desmond rejected both these suggestions. While it was doubtful whether Barling would hear the noise or, if he heard it, connect it with Desmond, it was certain that Strangwise and Bellward would do both and be upon Desmond without a moment's delay.

Then Desmond's eye fell upon the electric candle which had slid to the very edge of the table. It was mounted in a heavy bra.s.s candle-stick and the switch was in the pedestal, jutting out over the edge of the table in the position in which the candle now stood. The candle was clear of the mirror and there was nothing between it and the window. Desmond's brain took all this in at a glance. That glance showed him that Providence was being good to him.

A couple of jerks of the chair brought him alongside the table.

Its edge was practically level with the arms of the chair so that, by getting into the right position, he was able to manipulate the switch with his fingers. And then, thanking G.o.d and the Army Council for the recent signalling course he had attended, he depressed the switch with a quick, snapping movement and jerked it up again, sending out the dots and dashes of the Morse code.

"B-A-R-L-I-N-G" he spelt out, slowly and laboriously, it is true; for he was not an expert.

As he worked the switch, he looked across at the illuminated window of the room in which Barling stood, with bent head, earnestly engaged upon his polishing.

"B-a-r-l-i-n-g-ack-ack-ack-B-a-r-l-i-n-g-ack-ack-ack"

The light flickered up and down in long and short flashes. Still "Buzzer" Barling trilled away at the "Grand Reveille" nor raised his eyes from his work.

Desmond varied the call:

"O-K-E-W-O-O-D T-O B-A-R-L-I-N-G" he flashed.

He repeated the call twice and was spelling it out for the third time when Desmond saw the "Buzzer" raise his head.

The whistling broke off short.

"O-k-e-w-o-o-d t-o B-a-r-l-i-n-g" flickered the light.

The next moment the bedroom opposite was plunged in darkness.

Immediately afterwards the light began to flash with bewildering rapidity. But Desmond recognized the call.

"I am ready to take your message," it said.

"S-t-r-a-n-g-w-i-s-e h-a-s g-o-t m-e ack-ack-ack," Desmond flashed back, "f-e-t-c-h h-e-l-p a-t o-n-c-e ack-ack-ack: d-o-n-t r-e-p-l-y; ack-ack-ack; s-e-n-d o-n-e d-o-t o-n-e d-a-s-h t-o s-h-o-w y-o-u u-n-d-e-r-s-t-a-n-d ack-ack-ack!"

For he was afraid lest the light flashing from the house opposite might attract the attention of the men downstairs.

He was very slow and he made many mistakes, so that it was with bated breath that, after sending his message, he watched the window opposite for the reply.

It came quickly. A short flash and a long one followed at once.

After that the room remained in darkness. With a sigh of relief Desmond, as quietly as possible, manoeuvred the dressing-table back into place and then jerked the chair across the carpet to the position where Strangwise and Bellward had left him in the middle of the floor: