V
The shoulders of Watchel's huge figure shook with an effort at contemptuous laughter. But that laughter was as mirthless as the cackle of a guinea-hen. Kestner did not even deign to observe it. He turned sharply about to the watching woman.
"In the meantime I want you to take a botta direct to the American Embassy. Ask for Schuyler there, tell him I sent you, and wait until I come for you."
Watchel made a move of heavy impatience. The change in his own face denoted his determination to waste no more time over non-essentials.
"She can't do it. And you may as well know it now."
"Why can't she do it?"
Watchel unbuttoned his Inverness and tossed it to one side.
"Because at the bottom of that stairway, my young friend, are two officers waiting to place her under arrest, for selling Italian military secrets to the agent of a foreign power."
It was Kestner's turn to laugh.
"Call them up!" he commanded.
"I don't need to call them up," retorted Watchel, visibly disturbed by his opponent's confident manner.
"You can't call them up," broke in Kestner. "And I'll tell you the reason why. Those men are not there. And they're not there because of my orders. Do you understand that? And from this evening on, Herr Watchel, alias Gustav Wimpffen, alias Adolph Keudell, you're going to have something more than a lonely girl to fight against!"
Watchel, with an assumption of leisure, proceeded to remove his immaculate gloves.
"And what must I fight against?" he inquired with a lift of the eyebrows.
"Against me!" barked out Kestner as he crossed the room. Then he swung about to Maura Lambert again. "Have you got a key for this desk?"
"Yes," she answered.
"Where'd you get it?"
"I had a duplicate made after losing the first one, two days ago."
"And who got the first one?"
"I don't know."
"But I do. And this man Watchel does. Open the desk, please."
Kestner strode to the door and closed it, standing with his back to the heavy panels. The girl crossed to the teakwood desk and with shaking fingers fitted a key to the lock. Then she opened the lid.
Watchel took three steps forward, as though to follow her. Suddenly he stopped and turned about, facing Kestner.
"Do you know what this woman is?" he contemptuously demanded.
"Yes, I know what she is," cried back Kestner, and his voice was shaking. Seven months of banked fires, of repressed human passion, blazed out from him as he spoke. "And I know what you are, Wimpffen, and before you're taken back to Odessa to answer for the murder of Eichendorff a few others are going to know it! You're the cur who's low enough to steal a woman's keys and plant in her private desk a package of papers you thought would leave her in your power! You're the cowardly hound who tried to drag an honest woman into a life that was hateful to her, and you tried to do it by stealing Alfred Ruhl's cipher-messages to the Chief of the General Staff at Prague and hiding them in that desk and then having a couple of Italian agents as currish as yourself hound her until she was to swing in with your plans! That was the scheme, and when the time comes you're going to answer for it! But you're going to answer for it to me first! And you're going to do it before you get out of this room!"
The big blonde face was no longer unconcerned. The debonair expression about the heavy lips had vanished. The yellow-lashed lids had narrowed over the eyes and the jaw was thrust forward, as though the huge skull had been racked by the pressure of some vast yet invisible force at the nape of the neck. The colour of the face itself had also changed, the blood beneath the cuticle seeming to curdle and stagnate and leave splashes of saffron against a yellow background. And it was not a pleasant face to look upon.
But Kestner dwelt on none of these things. What suddenly but indeterminately disturbed him was the discovery that Watchel's hands were shaking as he fell back a step or two, with his eyes on the other man as he did so.
"Yes, I'm going to answer for it," Watchel said in a voice that seemed to come from his throat without a movement of the lips. "And I'm going to answer for it in the right way!"
Kestner's eyes had been fixed on the trembling hand that pawed for a moment along the carefully pressed lapel of the carefully tailored coat. He saw that hand suddenly disappear beneath the lapel, and at the same moment his own hand swung down to his hip. He knew, even as he did so, that the movement was useless, that his own automatic was in the side-pocket of the coat which he had flung into a corner of the room.
He saw the metal-flash of Watchel's revolver before he could possibly reach that corner or that coat. He was not a coward, but his heart stopped, for he knew what the next moment had in store for him.
His next action was instinctive; he had no time for thought. He ducked low and darted forward, thinking to reach the shelter of the heavy teakwood desk.
But the first shot came at the same moment that he ducked. He could feel a small twitch at the elbow, as though his coat-sleeve had been plucked by impatient and invisible fingers. That first flying bullet, he knew, had actually cut through the cloth of his coat.
But he had reached the desk-end before the second shot could be fired. His movement there was equally unreasoned and instinctive as his first. He caught the Roman lamp of heavy brass by the top. He was possessed of a vague idea to smash down the shaking hand still holding the revoler. But he could already feel that the action was a foolish one, for the waiting finger compressed on its trigger before that swinging standard of brass could even reach the zenith of its orbit.
Kestner was conscious of the quickly shifting barrel being directed at his own body. And he knew that the shot was to be fired, and fired at calamitously close quarters, that the small black mouth of the weapon was ordained to deliver its flame and lead.
Then the picture in some way became confused. Its shiftings were too rapid to decipher. But at what seemed the moment when the black barrel-end spoke he heard Maura Lambert's cry, flat with fear. He saw her hand dart out and clutch the glimmering steel barrel. She caught at it foolishly, insanely, as though a barrier so frail might hold back that tearing and rending bullet which an inch of solid oak could scarcely stop.
Her cry and the report of the revolver seemed almost simultaneous. Kestner saw her arm flung outward and downward, sharply. That movement could not have been more spasmodic had it been controlled by the quick jerk of a wire. But he saw that his own body had sustained no shock, and he had sense enough to remember there must be no time for a third shot.
Kestner was on his tiptoes as he brought the Roman lamp down on Watchel's upraised right arm, for all the strength of his being was behind that blow. It struck true. The fire-arm went clattering across the room and the hand that had held it suddenly collapsed.
A quick wonder seemed to fill Watchel's eyes as he stared at his own arm, for from the elbow down it hung helpless. But the wonder did not remain long in the pale eyes, for Kestner's second blow crashed down on the huge head, held slightly to one side. Before Kestner could strike again the swaying figure crumpled up on itself and sank to the floor, oddly twisted and contorted, as apparently spineless as a straw-stuffed effigy fallen from a fruit-tree.
Kestner stared for a moment at the tall standard of the lamp, bent like a rod of lead. Then he stared at the man on the floor. Then he suddenly dropped the lamp, for at the sound of a little gasp he remembered the fact of Maura Lambert's presence there.
She had sunk into a chair, and was bent forward clasping her right hand in her left. The thumb and fore-finger of the latter tightly enclosed the first finger of the other hand. There was blood on her skirt.
For a moment Kestner's breath caught in his throat. Then he saw what it all meant. That tightly held forefinger was without its first joint. Watchel's second bullet had torn away the entire bone and flesh of the first phalanx.
The thought of that perfect hand being thus disfigured awakened a foolish rage in him. Then through the first black moment of his anger shot a newer thought. It was more than a disfigured hand. It was a helpless one. Its power had been taken from it. Its meticulous adeptness with pen and brush would be forever lost. All that Paul Lambert had ever taught her belonged to another world.
Then a fury of activity seized him. He remembered running to the next room and catching up a folded towel and tearing it into strips. He remembered hearing many steps and voices in the passageway outside and much pounding and knocking on the door. He remembered telling her that they could get down to a cab and be at the Ospedale Internazionale in ten minutes' time. He remembered the convulsive shaking of her body as she surrendered her hand to his "first-aid" bandaging, and his clumsy efforts to reassure her that everything would be all right, and her renewed shudder as Watchel groaned aloud where he lay.
"Don't be frightened," Kestner said as he tied the ends of the roughly-made bandage.
"I'm not frightened—for myself," she quavered as she stared down at the inert figure on the floor.
"Then don't worry about that ox," was the other's quick cry of contempt. "Nothing but a rope will end him!"
Kestner steadied her as she rose to her feet. A sob caught in her throat as she leaned on his arm.
"Do you know what this means?" she tremulously asked. She was still staring apprehensively down at Watchel's groaning figure.
"It means the end of this sort of thing," declared Kestner. "It means you must come with me, and there can be no going back!"
She stared down at her roughly bandaged hand as Kestner crossed the room and unlocked the door.
"There can be no going back!" she repeated.
And when a rotund Guardia di Pubblica flung open the door he beheld a coatless man take the signora inglese in his arms and hold her there as she murmured, "Oh, I love you! I do! I do!"
THE END