SCORPION’S REALM

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 493, 30 June 1932, Page 18

SCORPION’S REALM

By

L. C. DOUTHWAITE

SYNOPSIS OF PREVIOUS CHAPTERS.

Handing from flic steamer Seahorse at Deptford, Colin liiversleigli hears from a disused shed the cry of a woman. He investigates and discovers a girl in the hands of Chinese. Hy a ru««* --.e rescues her, and is in by a man in a Rolls Royec. Colin discovers that his rescuer’s name is Dr. Valentine Cage. After treatment by Dr. Gage, the girl recovers and gives her name as Elizabeth Denstone. Dr. Gage has a caller named Humpv O’Grady, who warns the doctor to stop his investigations into the activity of The Scorpion. After the doctor has dismissed his visitor he calls up Herd Stonehousc, Elizabeth's uncle, and asks him to call for her. Colin now explains to Dr. Gage how be comes to be trying to trace The Scorpion. CHAPTER V. A Terrible Tragedy. Seated with his ear to the telephone in his plainly furnished but eminently comfortable room at the Foreign O/iice, into the face of Cord Stoneliouse that, usually so keenly rubicund, now was lined and fallen away with anxiety, came an expression of unutterable relief. The receiver replaced rather uncertainly oil its hook, the countenance lie turned to Chief Constable Parrot, who had been brought hot-foot from Scotland Yard within ten minutes of the discovery of Beths abduction, was of one who has been granted last-minute reprieve from calamity. “It’s all right, Parrot,” lie said in rather a tremulous voice, “my niece is safe.” The eyes of the gaunt chief constable, that since his vigil here had been en- j gaged in a losing battle with the laziness | that customarily was their chief cliarac- I teristic, became momentarily more alert. “Where is she, sir?’’ lie demanded quickly, and Lord Stoneliouse laughed, softly, but not yet with his usual selfcommand. “’ln the house of that amazing friend of ours, Doctor Valentine Gage,” lie replied. “1 don't know any details, but apparently my niece wasn’t retrieved without—er—incident. ...” Parrot, who with the removal of strain now was his old self again, shrugged his shoulders. “Incident,” he said, “is that cross between Don Quieksote an’ Sir Gallerad’s middle name. Family motto, ‘Where there’s Doc there’s doin’s.’ Telegraphic address, Nemmysis, London. Life president of the Deptford Association for the Suppression of an’ Retribution for Wrongdoin’. Scotland Yard’s little brother Alf. . . . Wherc’d he find Yliss Den stone, sir ?” Lord Stoneliouse shook a grey but virile head. “Probably he’ll confide details when we join him,” he said. “Over the ’phone he said very little.” His voice was unusually quiet as he added: “Pin to use the Unie car, and not to go alone.” And because as additional precaution to that concealed telephone it had been arranged that a suggestion to use a Unie car should be regarded as a warning of danger, Parrot’s mobile slit of a mouth grew momentarily grim. “I’ll step across to the Yard, sir, and make arrangements at once,” lie said, but gave no indication of the particular ones he had in mind. So it was tliat, even if Lord Stonehouse had happened to observe the second Unie car which, from fifty yards further up the Parliament Street end of Whitehall, moved off simultaneously with their own, there would have been no reason for him to regard the two circumstances as in any way connected. Along Whitehall and Parliament Street, then left over Westminster Bridge to the long stretches of Westminster Bridge Road and the Borough Road, a short length of Newington Causeway into Trinity Street to Dover Street; Old Kent Road, New Cross Road, across the old Crystal Palace Railway into Edward Street, and so into the maze of alleys and byways between the Greenwich railway and Greenwich Reach the car sped, with both men silent; Parrot pondering over that strange altruist who, at the journey’s end, would greet them, and the still stranger story that doubtless he could have to tell; Lord Stoneliouse, a lonely soul previous to her visit, lost in a mist of gratitude for the recovery of the American niece he had learned to love as he loved no other living soul. It was, as at reduced speed the car travelled that narrow and filthy thoroughfare from whence ran the alley in which so incongruously was situated Valentine Gage’s palace in the slums, from some inner instinct that more than once in his career had acted as his own particular guardian angel, Parrot knew danger —urgent, imminent. But though quickly and comprehensively his eyes roved from the hovels that lined either side of the road to the sidewalk, to the oar ahead and back again, it was not until the leading Unie was within fifty yards of the alley entrance that, at the open window of the crazy tenement house to which at the moment it had drawn level, for the fraction of a split second Parrot caught a glimpse of the figure who even in that infinitesimal moment, occurred to him as misshapen and grotesque, a figure who raised an abnormally long arm, drew back, and then swung forward. It was at the same instant that, to the nightmare horror of that hardbitten official. Chief Constable Parrot, the car ahead appeared infinitesimally to check. Then, as if by giant and frenzied hands each part had been plucked sepalately from contact with its fellow to be hurled madly high into the air, from the centre of an enormous upshooting flame, blood-red and vivid, that seemed to tear into and devour the churning masses of dense, foul smoke tliat was its outer edges, that whole car disintegrated. With a call upon self-discipline that as near as possible was simultaneous with the explosion, Constable Chart, driving their own car, jammed on liis brakes. With a shriek of protesting tyres that broke even into the tliud of falling debris, the car pulled up. Dazed, shaken, inarticulate, Lord Stoneliouse, Foreign Office official, and Chief Constable Parrot, of Scotland Yard, tumbled out; loped over to that smoking gaping hole where a moment ago had been a car. CHAPTER VI. Colin and Parrot Discuss the Position. With a. rush, followed instantly by Colin, Dr. Gage was out of hie seat and unfastening the bolts and chains of the front door. For from the street end of the alley outside had come a rending, tearing detonation that, stoutly built as

it was, shook the house to its foundations. . . Then the sound of human voices in agony. . . They were outside at la**: and tear- ; ing down the alley—to be met from the • passage mouth by rolling clouds of smoke; dense, acrid; impossible for their eyes to penetrate. And with every step they made the clamour in the street grow more evident and violent. Later is was estimated that the bomb was the largest that, in Europe, ever had been thrown by hand. Alighting on the road immediately in front of the foremost police tender, it had hurdled portions of that disintegrated vehicle a full hundred yards away. Of the four plain-clothes men it had carried, only traces ever were discovered —and these neither beautiful nor identifiable. And the tenement from the window of which the missile had been thrown was crushed and fallen-in as completely as if telescoped by some huge and irrisistiblo weight. On both sides of the street, of the houses within thirty yards of the explosion, not a window remained unbroken. As the two passed from the alley to the street they saw tliat about the gaping hole the bomb had plucked from the cobble-stones, three men were grouped. A swift and surreptitious inspection of the comfortable figure with the humorous grey eyes that now were not humorous at all, but savage and implacable, told Colin that here was his late father’s friend, and from whom, over the last few years, he had received his instructions. He watched his chief shake hands with Dr. Gage. “A terrible fiendish business this,” Lord Stoneliouse said quietly. “Later, perhaps, I shall be able to convey my thanks | and a portion of my gratitude for the | service you were able to render my. j niece. This, I think,” and he gestured toward the gaping hole in the roadway, “goes to show how great that service Dr. Gage, his hand on Colin’s arm, urged him forward. “It is to Riversleigh here your thanks are due. I Avas fortunate enough oniy to bo in a position to take a hand when actually the rescue Avas accomplished,” he explained, and Colin had no cause for complaint at the warmth of Lord Stonehouse’s greeting. “Now say how-d’ye-do to Chief Constable Parrot, of the C.1.D.,” said the latter cordially at last. Adding, quietly: “Probably in the future you’ll be seeing quite a lot of each other.” Already an unobtrusive inspection of that laconic man had told Colin tlial here was one with Avhom lie would be glad to work. A tall man and a gaunt, with big lean jaAv and eyes that should have been lazy, but uoav were impressed with the light of an anger that, though completely within control, was terribly real. “Four of ’em—gone!” he said, his lijie not Avholly steady. “As promisin’ a bunch as ever were marked for promotion. An’ if betAveen us avc can’t lay hands on the mass kilter behind it, I know one alleged police officer Aviio’ll retire m favour of keepin’ a rabbit-farm.” From the rear car that so fortuitously had escaped destruction, already Constable Chart had wirelessed both to Scotland Y’ard and the local police station. In the meantime, pending the arrival of personnel sufficient to draw a cordon about the decimated area, the two constables Avho had left their beats for the scene of the explosion were keeping back the croAvd that, like disturbed ants, sAA-armed from the neighbouring tenements. Then, when reinforcements had arriA’ed, the area A\*as isolated while search Avas made among the ruins. Presently, from them, Parrot emerged, gaunt and mud-bespattered. “We’ve found the human hoAvitzer,” he announced Avithout preliminary. “Alive?” Gage questioned, and Parrot shrugged bony shoulders. “As alive as a feller can be who for mor’n half an hour’s been under a 10ft pile of house-material,” he said callously. “Like to sec him?” “I'm a doctor,” replied Gage, and as at the neAVComer’s approach the little group of plain-clothes men about the stricken criminal divided, to Colin it came as no surprise to find himself looking into the narrow pain-distorted face of the hunchback, Humpy O’Grady. If Parrot had desired revenge for the murder of his subordinates, here, at least, was some measure of that retribution. Yet though the atrocity had left of the perpetrator only a mangled mass of crushed and mangled flesh, in the fast-glazing eyes that, as Gage bent over him, gazed upward into his own, Avas only hatred, bitter and unrelenting. “Are you in pain?” Dr. Gage asked gently, and the racked lips dreAv back in a sneer. “Not so much as you A\ill be—Avlien you meet the Scorpion, 5 ’ the dying cripple gasped. And Parrot, aa’lio perhaps had nursed the faint hope that, Avith his fastapproaching end. the crook might have undergone a change of heart, said shortly: “This Is no time for that hate stuff. The only harm that can come to you yourself. All the doctor wants is to make you as easy as he can.” “So as I’ll ‘rat’?’’ The Avords were spat rather than spoken. “Try to buy myself off from what you think’s cornin’ to me on the other side by a lastminute squeal?” With an effort as convulsiA'e as, in his shattered condition, it Avas amazing, O’Grady heaved himself almost to a sitting position; a long prehensile finger pointed uncertainly into the face of the one avlioso only thought for the moment Avas for liis better comfort. “Squeal —me?” he raved, and when they would haA’e laid him down, attempted frenziedlv to fight them off. “D’ye think I care for passing out?” He expelled slowly a rasping, tortured breath. “Best thing that couicl happen to me—because I failed!” be added. Then, at the last extremity, he fell back. He Avas not an attractive sight as be lay there, and as it Avas so obvious no more could be done for him, and that he most bitterly resented their presence, but for one circumstance they Avould have left him alone. Only—between the passing of consciousness and the end might come a hiatus when the spirit would cease in watchfulness over the lips. The surmise Avas accurate. For presently, after he had lain for so long silent that the Avatchcrs thought already the end had come, from out the mists came Avords —babbling, incoherent, painridden. But, just here aud there, those that, linked the one Avith the other, might make intelligible sequence. “Dragon!” the dying hunchback shouted, liis Aoice a feverish monotone. Followed an incoherent jumble of words and phrases, of cvhiclx nothing could bo

made. Then, constantly repeated, “Red . . . red. . ” Then a sound, sharplydrawn, sibilant, that came from lips drawn back over yellow teeth—abject, terrified—a word or name that to Colin sounded like “Ewing” or “You King,” but because of the uncertainty of the voice and the dry, tortured tongue that uttered it, could not determine which. And to that refrain Humpy O'Grady died. As they made their way -back to the house, over the sordid chimneys of Deptford, the first uncertain pallor of dawn was breaking. In the hall a cedarwood fire burnt; on the broad stone hearth stood a table of decanters and glasses, with Waters like a lean hound-dog hovering solicitously in the background. ■ Berore dispensing hospitality, however, Dr. Gage disappeared through the cloakroom door. It was during the time they were alone together that in response to the deceptively casual questions of the chief constable Colin told of how he came to be there, of the rescue of Beth Denstone, and of their own deliverance by the man who a moment previously had left them. It was then, also, that in turn he came to learn something of that same personality. “Queerest feller in London, that,” Parrot confided, nodding a gaunt head towards the cloakroom. “Brilliant, too — and dangerous. To himself, most of all. One of these days he’ll be gettin’ ten years for conspirin’ to defeat the ends of justice, whicli’ll be the signal for all the worst crooks in London —the blackers, the dope-runners, the white slave traffickers —to burn joss-stocks to the prosecution, while the little fellers — the whizzers an’ the shoplifters, an’ the small-time screwsmen’ll hold a day of mournin’.” Even as Colin looked his surprise at this odd summary, he knew that in the man under discussion was a quality that Inade an appeal to him greater than that of any whom previously he had encountered. The mystery of him; the magnetism that was so much more compelling because obviously so unconsciously pxercised; his dominating personality and 'burning sincerity. “Docs he still practise? As a doctor, I mean?” he inquired, and the gaunt detective’s laugh was grim. “Yet bet your sweet life he practises,” he said with lazy emphasis. “And let me tell you, that if that 1930 Beau Brummel was to set up his plate in Harley Street we’d have to detail u squad to regulate the queues. Knows more about the human spare parts than a plumber about the bathroom taps. An* hasn’t always to be runnin’ back to fetch his tools, cither —if a plumber ever does run—because they’re always with him, right there iu his head.” Colin put a suggestion that was inspired not so much by curiosity as by the intensity of his interest. “He can’t make much of an income—here in Deptford?” lie questioned, srlancing comprehensively about the warm luxury with which they were surrounded. Parrot made a gesture that for him was of unusual eloquence. “Bless your life, Valentine Gage isn’t like you an’ me—he doesn’t work for money!” lie said. “He’s all of it there is of his own. Wlmt lie’s out for is to leave the world a little better than lie found it, an’ he knows he can’t do that without first puttin’ the lads who’re the cause of the trouble through the hoop. Both in medicine and crime lie’s a kind of cleansing fire, and money’s the last thing he thinks of.” Colin nodded. Tlic estimate corresponded with his own first impressions; somehow he was not able to associate ■ that old world figure with any idea of working for profit. His thoughts were ’stiff,” getting a good start, and then broken into by Parrot. (To be continued daily.)