The men seemed to have come to some sort of agreement.

They acted with neatness and precision. A filthy and evil-smelling handkerchief was suddenly rammed into the duke's mouth. Another bandaged his eyes before he realised what was happening, and two pair of stalwart arms had him up upon his feet, locked in the London policeman's grip, and half carried, half hustled right away from where he had been lying almost before he realised what was happening.

He heard the click of a gate or door. His feet had left the gravel or cinder upon which they had been walking and were now apparently shuffling over flagstones. Then, by an added chill to the cold air, and a certain echo in the footsteps, he knew that he was being pushed down some sort of alley or cul de sac.

He was twisted from left to right and from right to left with the greatest rapidity, and half the extraordinary journey was not completed before he had utterly lost all idea of his whereabouts.

The noise of the distant rescuers at the scene of the accident sank into a low hum and then died completely away.

He seemed to be rushing along some maze or city of the dead, for no human sound save the noise of his and his captors' movements reached his ears.

In four or five minutes he was rudely stopped. He heard a knock upon a door, a peculiar and obviously signal knock. There was a sound of a window opening, a low whistle, and he was pushed forward up a few steps and into a house, the door of which was immediately closed behind him.

He was hustled along an evil-smelling pa.s.sage, down a flight of uneven stone stairs and into a room, a room much warmer than the cold pa.s.sages which he had traversed, a room in which there were several people, and where a fire was burning.

The cruel grip which had held him like a vice in its strength and ingenuity was a little relaxed.

He was pushed down upon a chair. The air of the room was stifling, his body was wet with perspiration, owing to the sudden transition from cold to heat, the restricted breathing, and the extreme rapidity of his progress.

A hand rested on his cheek for a moment and then plucked the filthy handkerchief from his mouth.

The duke took a deep breath. Foul as the air was in this place it seemed at this moment balmy as those breezes laden with ca.s.sia and nard which blow through the Gardens of the Hesperides.

Then a voice spoke: "You will be all right, guv'nor. Sorry to 'ave 'ad to treat you a bit rough like, but, 'pon my sivvey, we wasn't goin' to lose a bit-of-orl-right like this. Just for precaution's sake, as you might sye, we'll----"

The sentence was not concluded, but the duke felt his legs were being tied to the legs of the chair. His arms were suddenly caught up and pressed behind him. He was perfectly helpless.

Then the bandage was removed from his eyes.

He found himself in a place which, in his experience, was utterly unlike anything that he had seen before, or even imagined. As a matter of fact, he was sitting trussed upon a windsor chair in an underground thieves'

cellar-kitchen.

A large fire of coal and c.o.ke glowed in the white-washed fire-place.

There were shelves with crockery and other utensils on each side of the fire. An ancient armchair, covered with torn and dirty chintz, was drawn to the fire, and in it sat a very large fat woman of middle age. She wore heavy gold earrings, bracelets were upon her wrists, and a glinting flash from her fat and dirty fingers showed that the diamonds in her rings were real. No one could have mistaken her for an instant for anything else than a Jewess.

There were five or six men in the room.

As the duke became accustomed to the light of the big paraffin lamp which hung from the ceiling he saw that all these men were singularly alike. They were all clean shaven, for one thing, and they all seemed to have the same expression. Their mouths were one and all intelligent and slightly deferential. Their eyes flickered a good deal hither and thither and were curiously and quietly watchful. There was a precision about their movements.

"Could they all be brothers?" he wondered idly, for his brain was still weakened by shock, "and could that fat woman with the filthy clothes and the rings be their mother?"

"Now, then, guv'nor," said one of the men with perfect politeness, but with a curious under-note of menace in his voice, "we know who your lordship is. It is a fair cop. We've got you 'ere, and of course you are not going away from 'ere unless you makes it nice and heasy for all parties."

The man spoke in a hoa.r.s.e voice, but, again, a singularly quiet voice.

Menace was there, it is true, but there was something cringing also.

Who could these men be? the duke thought idly and as if in a dream. They looked like actors. Yes, they were very much like actors. Was it that he had----

The true explanation burst in upon him. He remembered a certain magazine article he had once read with a curious mixture of disgust and pity, a magazine article which was ill.u.s.trated by many photographs. These men were alike for a very sufficient reason. A terrible discipline had pressed them into its irremediable mould.

They were all old convicts. They were men who had "done time."

CHAPTER VIII

"IN CELLAR COOL!"

The duke knew perfectly well that he had fallen into the hands of as rascally and evil a gang of ruffians as London could produce. He made no answer to the words of the man who had addressed him.

"You will be better off if you listen to Sidney reasonable, dearie,"

said the horrible old woman. The words dropped from her lips like gouts of oil. "You will be all the better for listening to Sidney! I'm sure n.o.body wants to do anything unpleasant to you, but folks must live, and you've reely walked in most convenient, as you might sye."

"What do you want?" the duke said at last.

"Well, sir," the man addressed as "Sidney" replied, "we have got you fair. n.o.body saw us take you away. You've disappeared from the accident without leaving a trace like." As he spoke, the man's servile, wolfish face was a sheer wedge of greed and cunning. His tongue moistened his lips as if in antic.i.p.ation of something. "You see, n.o.body can't possibly know where you've come. They will think you were smashed up, or got up and went away, out of your mind, after the shock. People'll hunt all over London for you, no doubt, but they won't never think of us. Now, we've got your very 'ansom ticker and a few quids, and the gold purse that 'eld them, and there was a matter of forty or fifty pound in notes in the pocket-book when we opened it. It was that, by the wye, as told us who you was. Now, our contention is that them as 'as as much money as you must contribute to them as 'asn't."

He grinned as if pleased with his own wit, and a horrid little uncertain chuckle went round the room, a chuckle with something not quite human in it.

"Now, wot I says," the man continued, "is this. We will return you the ticker because it won't be of much use to us, except the gold case.

We'll keep the chain and the quid box and the quids, and we'll also keep the fi-pun notes. Then, my lord, you'll sit down and write a little note to your bankers and enclose a cheque. I see you have got the cheque-book with you, or I've got it at least. Now, the question is what the amount of this 'ere cheque shall be. You, being a rich man, we cannot put it low, and we hold all the cards. Let's say three thousand pounds. In addition to that you'll give us your word of honour as a gentleman to take no proceedings about this 'ere little matter and say nothing about it to n.o.body. When that's done, by to-morrow morning, mid-day, say, you can go, and I am sure," he concluded, "with an 'earty hand-shake from yours truly, being a gentleman, as I am sure you will prove, and a lord, too."

The duke considered.

Three thousand pounds is a large sum of money, though to him it meant little or nothing. At the same time his whole manhood rose up within him--the stubbornness of his race steeled him against granting these miscreants their demand. A flood of anger mounted to his brain. His upper lip stiffened and his eyes glinted ominously.

At last he answered the man.

"I'll see you d----d," he said, "before I give you a single halfpenny!

And let me tell you this, that, as sure as you stand here now, you are bringing upon yourselves a sure and speedy punishment. You think, because I am wealthy and you know who I am, you have got a big haul. If you were just a little cleverer than you are you would understand that the Duke of Paddington cannot disappear, even for a few hours, without urgent inquiry being made for him. You will infallibly be discovered, and you know what the result of that will be."

"Not quite so fast," said the man called Sidney, in a smooth, quiet voice. "It is all very well to talk like this 'ere, but you don't know what you are a-saying of. You don't know in whose hands you are. People like us don't stick at nothing. As sure as eggs is eggs, unless you do as we are asking, you will never be seen or heard of any more. You think we run a risk? Well, I'll tell you this--I've had a good deal of professional experience--this is one of the easiest jobs to keep out of sight that I've ever 'ad. Now, supposing there 'ad been a little high-cla.s.s job in the West End--matter of a jeweller's shop, say--or a house in Park Lyne. In that case we should be pretty certain to have some 'tecs nosing round this quarter, finding out where I or some other of my pals had been the night before. We should be watched, and the fences would be watched, until they could prove something against us.

But in this case the police won't have a single idea wot will connect us with your disappearance."

"I am not going to argue with you, my man," the duke answered calmly. "I am not accustomed to bandy words with anybody, much less a filthy criminal ruffian like you! You can go to blazes, the whole lot of you! I won't give any of you a farthing!"

Even now the man who was the spokesman of that furtive, evil crew did not lose his temper. He smiled and nodded to himself, as if marking what the duke had said and weighing it over in his mind.

"All right," he answered at length. "That is what you say now. You will say different soon. I am not going to make any bones about it, but I'll tell you the programme, and that is this: To-night we are going to tie you up and take you down into a cellar. There's another one below this, and it ain't got no light nor fire, neither. It is simply a hole in the foundations of the house, that is wot it is. And the rats are all-alive-oh down there, I can tell you! Nice, warm, little furry rats with pink 'ands. You will stay down there to-night, and to-morrow morning I'll come and ask you this question again. I should like to get the business settled and over by mid-day. No use wasting time when there's work to be done. I am a business man, I am. Then, if your blooming lordship is fool enough not to agree to our little proposals by that time--well, then, I can only say that--much as I should regret 'aving to do it--we should 'ave to try what a little physical persuasion means--some 'ot sealing-wax upon the bare stomach, or a splinter or two of wood 'ammered between the nail and the finger, or even a good deal worse than that. Well, it'll all depend on you."

There was something so repulsively insolent in the man's voice that the duke's sense of outrage and anger was even greater than his fear.

He could not, did not, believe that these men would do anything of what they had threatened. His whole upbringing and training had made it almost impossible for him to believe that such a thing could happen to him. It was incredible--perfectly astounding and incredible--that he had even met with this misfortune, that he was where he was. But that the results of his capture would be pushed so far as the man said he was absolutely sceptical. His fierce and lambent sense of anger mastered everything.

"Don't try and frighten me, you scoundrel!" he said. "I won't give you a penny!"