SCORPION’S REALM

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 492, 29 June 1932, Page 12

SCORPION’S REALM

By

L. C. DOUTHWAITE

SYNOPSIS OF PREVIOUS CHAPTERS. Landing from the steamer Seahorse at Deptford, Colin Riversleigh hears from a disused shed the cry of a woman. He investigates and discovers a girl in the hands of Chinese. By a ruse, he rescues her, and is in his turn rescued from the pursuing Chinamen by a man in a Rolls Royce. Colin discovers that his rescuer’s name is Dr. Valentine Gage. CHAPTER IV. Colin Explains His Connection With the Scorpion. And then it was that with shiningeyes Betli Denstone turned to Dr. Gage, and from him, with a warmth he found , a very lovely thing, to Colin. “What I’m feeling right now,” she said in ultimate contrition, “would make thirty cents look like the United States Treasury. Rescued at appalling risk from something that—well, that I don’t need to cross the gipsy’s palm with silver to know would’ve been”—she shuddered —“unpleasant, and treated like a combination of star patient in a nursing home and royal princess, I behave like a schoolmarm captured by the pirate king.” To each she extended impulsively a hand. “Only now Im out of the ether, I’d like to say ‘thank you.’ ” Than Dr. Gage not Sir Philip Sidney himself could more gravely or gracefully have raised and saluted that hand. “At least let us admit that the circumstances were —unusual,” lie said. “Tell me how did you come to fall into the hands of the enemy?” Restored now to full confidence, Beth’s smile was one of self-depreciation.

“Whoever imitated my uncle’s voice on the telephone—saying'he was sending Lord Saville’s car to take me to a shooting-party outside Stratford—is just wasted as a crook; the vaudeville siage is his spiritual home,” she said. “Inside the car was a man who, the moment I entered, locked my arms and ]iut a pad over my mouth—chloroform, I guess. Anyway, the next thing I knew I was lying on a couch in that shack with four Chinks viewing the body. . . And as soon as I’d g-athered myself together I screamed —hoping someone would be around to lend a hand, but at first all that happened was that while one of the Chinks threatened me with a gun, one of his boy friends shot a dose of something into my arm from a hypodermic syringe. When I came to 1 was here.”

Colin smiled grimly. “A fortunate thing, nevertheless, that scream of yours,” he remarked. “Because it was that I heard . . As Beth returned his glance, with the appreciation in her eyes was mingled a great perplexity. “But what does it all mean?” she cried. “What made them pick on me, anyway?” “As a lever to use against your uncle, and my very good friend, Lord Stonehouse,” Dr. Gftge said quietly. “And speaking of him,” he went on beforo she had time to put a further question, “it will be well to lose no • timo in advising him of your safety. Unless I’m mistaken, by now he’ll be a Aery worried man.” j “But, with the opposition listening-in on your telephone, how can we advise him ?” Colin demanded, and the doctor smiled. ' “By using another one.. If Miss Denstone will excuse us —” he said, went to the door, and with a motion of his head invited Colin to follow. They crossed the hall to a cloakroom on the left entrance, where, in a far corner, stood a built-in cupboard, that Gage opened to disclose a row of pegs upon which hung coats and hats. “Step inside,” the doctor instructed surprisingly, and, followed by his host, Colin

obeyed. When the door closed and they Avere in darkness, Colin felt an upward movement of his host’s arm. Then liis interior economy protested as swiftly the floor sank beneath them. ... A few moments, and as easily as it had descended the ele\ 7 ator stopped. Immediately the light went up. The door opened, and they stepped out; automatically and silently the cupboard ascended. The cellar, built into the foundations of the house, was of unusually solid construction; dry, concrete-lined, and electrically lighted and' heated; the centre occupied by a fully-furnished writing table and chair. Facing the elevator were two steel doors similar to those of strong rooms. “A retreat that, apart from myself, is known only to three others, of Avhom you are one,” Dr. Gage explained, and his tone forbade inquiry as to the identity of those “others.” The doctor crossed the floor, and turned the dial of the door to the extreme left; backwards, forwards, seA’en or eight times. The door swung open and, ushering Colin before him and switching on the light, Dr. Gage entered an apartment that, apart from a writing table similar to the one outside, Avas devoid of furniture. Smoothly-running as the piston of a well-lubricated cylinder, in response to that slight pull, a twelve-inch diameter tube descended from the ceiling, and with the flex of the light coiling beneath, came to rest gently on the writing table. Once the shaft was stationary, the doctor’s hand went to the still brightlyburning bulb; gave it a- half-turn. And with that movement, silently, from the face of the shaft a tiny door swung open. “For the love of Pete!” Colin said amazedly, for on a shelf in the hollow thus disclosed stood a telephone. “A shade theatrical, perhaps,” he remarked apologetically over his shoulder as he Avaited for the number he had given; “but of strict utility. For while over the instrument in the surgery are spoken just those messages it is to our interests shall be intercepted, from here, where the Avires are concealed underground, I send those that —matter. . . . “Your niece is here, quite safely, with friend from abroad,” the doctor announced into the receiver a moment later, and' to Colin, unusually sensitive to impressions, it was as though over the wire was transmitted some faint echo of the relief that quiet statement brought to 'the man at the other end. There was a silence. Then: “Good!” Gage said, satisfaction in his A’oice, and went on to make one or two suggestions—“though,” and to

Colin the tone was now quietly impressive—“if I may A’olunteer the suggestion, in the Unic car— and not alone!” A further moment, with the doctor intent at the receiver; then, the latter replaced' on its hook and the electric bulb returned to its original position, with the same noiseless ease as it had descended, the shaft disappeared into the ceiling. They went up to the hall; before the big lire of cedar wood awaited the arrival of Lord Stonehouse. And in that interval Colin told —and learnt—much. “Of course, The Scorpion, as he calls himself, is as crazy as a Malay run amuk,” he said gravely at last. “And if there’s anything I can do —or give—to stamp on his head and cut off the distribution of his poison, why—that’s all, the last two or three years, I’ve been living for.” Chin sunk into liis stock, slim strap-ped-trousered legs outstretched before the blaze, white hands folded in front of him, his host nodded coniirmatively. For than himself none knew better what, for liis younger companion, that period had entailed; the unremitting keyed-up vigilance, the breath-taking risks, the ice-cold cruelty of the criminal genius against whom his war had been waged; how night and day, at any moment of that fight, might have been demanded from him the last sacrifice of all—that of life itself, and with a fashion to his passing that would neither have been swift nor merciful. “Tell me; in the course of your investigations did you ever discover the—the prime motive —what fer Avant of a better phrase I’ll call the inspiration, of this campaign?” Dr. Gage said at last, and his voice Avas so obviously schooled that Colin looked up sharply. “Let me tell you how I first came into contact with The Scorpion,” he suggested, and Dr. Gage nodded. “That,” he said, “aa'oulcl help considerably. I know the main facts, of course, because it Avas upon those that, originally, I Avas- —commissioned. The exact details, however, and at first hand, might shed a light on the circumstances that, hitherto, I have missed.” Colin thought for a moment, assembling his thoughts into sequence. “Briefly,” he said at last, “the circumstances were these. During one month, in Vancouver, no less than fourteen different girls disappeared; Avithout exception from the Avealthiest and most prominent families in the city. I AA’as a corporal in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police at the time, and we Avere in charge of the investigation. In the exact order they disappeared, those girls commenced to trickle back. Physically and spiritually, each Avas bedraggled, nerve-shattered, terrified, and abject. Among them all was not one Avho, under any ’ inducement, could be persuaded to give any information as to the circumstances of her abduction, or to Avhere she had been taken.”

As Colin paused, Dr. Gage nodded. “That,” he said, “corresponds Avith my information.” “It Avas I, however,” Colin Avcnt on, “who happened to obtain the first clue. One night I Avas dining at The Royal Palace Hotel, when in came Marion Beale, daughter of a millionaire lumberking, the first of the girls to have disappeared, as she Avas the first to have returned home. The big and fresh and jolly girl I’d known, now was intolerably shrill and feverish; her eyes Avere unnaturally dilated, her too-reddened lips tremulous, and her skin leaden.” “The usual symptoms,” Dr. Gage murmured, sadly. Colin’s mouth Avas hard, now, as he

“I think it was that awful change which first determined me, at all and every cost, to stamp out the influence that" had caused it; if necessary to dc-\-ote my Avhole life to the Avork. That, incidentally, is why, subsequently, I left the force; as probably you know I’m lucky enough to have a private income. When she left the hotel I followed. She drove her two-seater doAvn a quiet treelined road. Immediately beneath one of the largest, she pulled up. Watching, I saAV something drop into the car from one of the lower branches. When she drove off, instead of following, I Avaited. A figure swarmed down a rope that coiled down from the tree. It was a Jap. He fought like a wild-cat—tried to knife me. After a spot of bother, however, I had him where I wanted him.” This time, when Colin paused, his face Avas flushed. There Avas, too, as he continued, a faintly apologetic note in his “A friend of mine had a batliing-hut facing English Bay. I had the key, and that’s where I took the Jap—it Avasn’t a time for kid-glove methods. I won’t go into details as to Avhat happened there, but when I came out two hours later it Avas to make straight for the barracks. Within half an hour the largest posse of police that at any one time we ever turned out, Avas raiding the chop-suey joint of Kao Cli’ing in Plender Street — that is the Limehouse of Vancouver. Before we penetrated into Avhat may be called the inner fastnesses Ave lost two men killed, and Major Oxford, the 0.C., was wounded. And in those silken-hung, divan-lined rooms, we found the explanation of why those girls had left home. We also found the odd half-dozen or so that as yet hadn’t returned.” “In the same state, I take it, only probably rather worse, than Miss Beale?”'Gage broke in to suggest. “Worse or better —according to the length of time they’d been there,”. Colin confirmed. “Just as avc Avere leaving, a curious luminous patch appeared in the Avail; out of it looked a face—the most terrible, as it Avas the most utterly loathsome, it is possible to imagine.” Gage, who since the beginning of the narratiA'e had not changed his position, looked up sharply. “European, or—Asiatic?” he demanded quickly, and for a moment Colin hesitated. “You couldn’t haA’e asked me a question more difficult to answer,” he said at last. “It was neither white nor yelloav ; it had the bone-6trueture of the East with the mouth and nose of the West. It was a face that neither froAvncd nor sneered nor smiled; that displayed neither anger, displeasure, nor dismay. Only, with a blank negation of every human motion, just looked at us. I don’t want to appear melodramatic, but it’s nothing but stark truth to say that, with the appearance of that face, it Avas as if into the room had swept an after-breeze from the A’ery Pit itself.” “Did the face speak?” Dr. Gage said quietly. “I shall remember the words,” Colin said, “if I live to be a hundred. Not so much for the substance, as the voice

in which they were spoken. It had a curious knife-edged sibilance, and yet Avas so absolutely without life.” “And the \-oice said?” Gage questioned. “ ‘Although, to-night, by treachery, you have been enabled to sever a single tAvig, the tree —the creeping, irresistible, all-embracing roots, the multitudinous branches that since the first seed germinated from the parent trunk liaA’e spread in every direction —is as unaffected as is a giant oak by the loss of a single acorn. It is a tree whose roots, before many years, -will have surrounded the Avorld —silently, irresistibly —crushing it, killing it!” There was a strange silence in that loA’ely old-world hall. Gage remained still motionless, the calm aestheticism of his expression unchanged. And yet, glancing up at him keenly, Colin saw, at the far back of his eyes, a light that inexpressibly heartened him. That light told him that in this strange man he had an ally who, until cither its light Avas extinguished or, because, the work accomplished, no longer Avas it necessary to retain his grasp, never Avould release the torch that mutually they had taken up. “And then?” Gage demanded quietly. “When we rushed forward, it Avas to find ourselA’es up against a Avail of strong-room steel —one that nothing we had brought with us was of the slightest use against,” Colin said. “The patch the face had looked out of was a nineinch grille, and even that took us a good tAventy minutes to force. Immediately behind, by a flight of steps and a passage. a trapdoor led to the cellar of the Hubbard News-stand and Shoeshine Parlours, in the street that ran parallel. James Hubbard, the proprietor, had left, by a further passage that communicated with an empty store further down the street, and a motor car had driven him “The next morning we learnt that, four miles outside the city limits, from the lawn that fronted the experimental farm of a most elusive gentleman named Elmer Royston, and, because Avhat business he’d done was by deputy of his foreman, no one knew even by sight—an aeroplane had taken off.” “And that enterprising foreman ?” Gage questioned. “It was he who piloted the ’plane,” said Colin. “And, floating face downward in English Bay three days later, we discovered all that was left of the Jap I’d —interviewed —in the bathing hut. But his death was not from drowning. It had been less rapid,” involuntarily he shuddered, “than painful.” Again there was that silence, in which each was engaged in his own thoughts. Suddenly Colin looked up. “Ami so it was,” he said, “that Avith the situation well in hand in the We3t I left the Force and pulled up stakes for Montreal. There for months I lived in the Lagauchetiere-Cadieuz Street district, that if anything’s worse than Plender Street, Vancouver, and from where I got into touch Avith the British Foreign Office. Eventually, upon instructions from Lord Stonehouse, I \A _ ent on to Calcutta —I could tell you things about Clia’noni Chack, the Chink district there, that’d surprise even you—and after nearly a year was ordered to Shanghai. It was through Avhat, after a year’s AA r ork I gathered there, that I came to realise the centre of activity had become transferred to England.” Dr. Gage said with unusual warmth: “The information you have given has been inA-aluablc. For while from The Scorpion’s point of vicAv Vancouver Avas a comparative failure, those other places —Montreal, Avith its congested population; Calcutta and Shanghai, Avith inflammatory native material to Avork upon —have all been terribly successful. It was with the knowledge gained through his success in those places, in fact, that The Scorpion inaugurated his campaign in what from the first had been his objective —the heart and nervecentre of the British Empire—England. Because, if England falls, then—” But what he was on the point of saying was not to be completed. (To be continued daily.)