Inside the Lines (Biggers and Ritchie)/Chapter 18
CHAPTER XVIII
THE TRAP IS SPRUNG
JANE GERSON, tossing on her pillows, heard the mellow bell of a clock somewhere in the dark and silent house strike three. This was the fifth time she had counted the measured strokes of that bell as she lay, wide-eyed, in the guest chamber's canopied bed. An eternity had passed since the dinner guests' departure. Her mind was racing like some engine gone wild, and sleep was impossible. Over and over again she had conned the events of the evening, always to come at the end against the impasse of General Crandall's blunt denial: "You shan't sail in the morning." In her extremity she had even considered flight by stealth—the scaling of walls perhaps, and a groping through dark streets to the wharf, there to smuggle herself somehow on a tender and so gain the Saxonia. But her precious gowns! They still reposed in their bulky hampers here in Government House; to escape and leave them behind would be worse than futile. The governor's fiat seemed absolute.
Urged by the impulse of sheer necessity to be doing something—the bed had become a rack—the girl rose, lit a taper, and began to dress herself, moving noiselessly. She even packed her traveling bag to the last inch and locked it. Then she sat on the edge of the bed, hands helplessly folded in her lap. What to do next? Was she any better off dressed than thrashing in the bed? Her yearning called up a picture of the Saxonia, which must ere this be at her anchorage, since the consul said she was due at two. In three short hours tenders would puff alongside; a happy procession of refugees climb the gangway—among them the Shermans and Willy Kimball, bound for their Kewanee; the captain on the bridge would give an order; winches would puff, the anchor heave from the mud, the big boat's prow slowly turn westward—oceanward—toward New York! And she, a prisoner caught by the mischance of war's great mystery, would have to watch that diminishing column of smoke fade against the morning's blue—disappear.
Inspiration seized her. It would be something just to see the Saxonia, now lying amid the grim monsters of the war fleet. From the balcony of the library, just outside the door of her room, she could search the darkness of the harbor for the prickly rows of lights marking the merchant ship from her darker neighbors. The general's marine glasses lay on his desk, she remembered. To steal out to the balcony, sweep the harbor with the glasses, and at last hit on the ship of deliverance—for all but her; to do this would be better than counting the hours alone. She softly opened the door of her room. Beyond lay the dim distances of the library, suddenly become vast as an amphitheater; in the thin light filtering through the curtains screening the balcony appeared the lumpy masses of furniture and vague outlines of walls and doors. She closed the door behind her, and stood trembling; this was somehow like burglary, she felt—at least it had the thrill of burglary.
The girl tiptoed around a high-backed chair, groped her way to the general's desk, and fumbled there. Her hand fell upon the double tubes of the binoculars. She picked them up, parted the curtains, and stepped through the opened glass doors to the balcony. Not a sound anywhere but the faint cluck and cackle of cargo hoists down in the harbor. Jane put the glasses to her eyes, and began to sweep the light-pointed vista below the cliff. Scores of pin-prick beams of radiance marked the fleet where it choked the roadstead—red and white beetles' eyes in the dark. She swung the glasses nearer shore. Ah, there lay the Saxonia, with her three rows of glowing portholes near the water; the binoculars even picked out the double column of smoke from her stacks. Three brief hours and that mass of shadow would be moving—moving
A noise, very slight, came from the library behind the opened doors. The marine glasses remained poised in the girl's hands while she listened. Again the noise—a faint metallic click.
She hardly breathed. Turning ever so slowly, she put one hand between the curtains and parted them so that she could look through into the cavernous gloom behind her.
A light moved there—a clear round eye of light. Behind it was the faintest suggestion of a figure at the double doors—just a blur of white, it was; but it moved stealthily, swiftly. She heard a key turn in a lock. Then swiftly the eye of light traveled across the library to the door leading to General Crandall's room. There it paused to cut the handle of the door and keyhole beneath out of darkness. A brown hand slipped into the clear shaft of whiteness, put a key into the keyhole, and softly turned it. The same was done for the locks of Lady Crandall's door, on the opposite side of the library, and for the one Jane had just closed behind her—her own door. Than the circle of light, seeming to have an intelligence all its own, approached the desk, flew swiftly to a drawer and there paused. Once more the brown hand plunged into the bore of light; the drawer was carefully opened, and a steel-blue revolver reflected bright sparks from its barrel as it was withdrawn.
Jane, hardly daring to breathe, and with the heavy curtains gathered close so that only a space for her eyes was left open, watched the orb of light, fascinated. It groped under the desk, found a nest of slender wires. There was a "Snick—snick!" and the severed ends of the wires dropped to the floor. The burnished dial of the wall safe, set near the double doors, was the next object to come under the restless searching eye. While light poured steadily upon the circular bit of steel, delicate fingers played with it, twisting and turning this way and that. Then they were laid upon the handle of the safe door, and it swung noiselessly back. A tapering brown hand, white-sleeved, fumbled in a small drawer, withdrew a packet of papers and selected one.
Jane stepped boldly into the room.
"Sahibah!" The white club of the electric flash smote her full in the face.
"What are you doing at that safe, Jaimihr Khan?" Jane spoke as steadily as she could, though excitement had its fingers at her throat, and all her nerves were twittering. She heard some sharply whistled foreign word, which might have been a curse.
"Something that concerns you not at all, Sahibah," the Indian answerd, his voice smooth as oil. He kept the light fair on her face.
"I intend that it shall concern me," the girl answered, taking a step forward.
"Veree, veree foolish, Sahibah!" Jaimihr whispered, and with catlike stride he advanced to meet her. "Veree foolish to come here at this time."
Jane, frozen with horror at the man's approach, dodged and ran swiftly to the fireplace, where hung the ancient vesper bell. The flash light followed her every move—picked out her hand as it swooped down to seize a heavy poker standing in its rack beside the bell.
"Sahibah! Do not strike that bell!" The warning came sharp and cold as frost. Her hand was poised over the bell, the heavy stub of the poker a very few inches away from the bell's flare.
"To strike that bell might involve in great trouble one who is veree dear to you, Sahibah. Let us talk this over most calmly. Surely you would not desire that a friend—a veree dear friend"
"Who do you mean?" she asked sharply.
"Ah—that I leave to you to guess!" Jaimihr Khan's voice was silken. "But certainly you know, Sahibah. A friend the most important"
Then she suddenly understood. The Indian was referring to Captain Woodhouse thus glibly. Anger blazed in her.
"It isn't true!"
"Sahibah, I am sorry to con-tradict." Jaimihr Khan had begun slowly to creep toward her, his body crouching slightly as a stalking cat's.
"I'll prove it isn't true!" she cried, and brought the poker down on the bell with a sharp blow. Like a tocsin came its answering alarm.
"A thousand devils!" The Indian leaped for the girl, but she evaded him and ran to put the desk between herself and him. He had snapped off the torch at the clang of the bell, and now he was a pale ghost in the gloom—fearsome. Hissing Indian curses, he started to circle the desk to seize her.
"Open this door! Open it, I say!" It was the general's voice, sounding muffled through the panels of his door; he rattled the knob viciously. Jane tried to run to the door, but the Indian seized her from behind, threw her aside, and made for the double doors. There his hand went to a panel in the wall, turned a light switch, and the library was on the instant drenched with light. Jaimihr Khan threw before the door of the safe the bundle of papers he was clutching when Jane discovered him and which he had gripped during the ensuing tense moments. Then he stepped swiftly to the general's door and unlocked it.
General Crandall, clad only in trousers and shirt, burst into the room. His eyes leaped from the Indian to where Jane was cowering behind his desk.
"What the devil is this?" he rasped. Jane opened her mouth to answer, but the Indian forestalled her:
"The sahibah, General—I found her here before your opened safe"
"Good God!" General Crandall's eyes blazed. He leaped to the safe, knelt and peered in. "A clever job, young woman!"
Jane, completely stunned by the Indian's swift strategy, could hardly speak. She held up a hand, appealing for a hearing. General Crandall eyed her with chilling scorn, then turned to his servant.
"You have done well, Jaimihr."
"It—it isn't true!" Jane stammered. The governor took a step toward her almost as if under impulse to strike her, but he halted, and his lips curled in scorn.
"By gad, working with Woodhouse all the time, eh? And I thought you a simple young woman he had trapped—even warned you against him not six hours ago. What a fool I've been!" Jane impulsively stretched forth her arms for the mercy of a hearing, but the man went on implacably:
"I said he was making a fool of you—and all the time you were making one of me. Clever young woman. I say, that must have been a great joke for you—making a fool of the governor of Gibraltar. You make me ashamed of myself. And my servant—Jaimihr here; it is left to him to trap you while I am blind. Bah! Jaimihr, my orderly—at once!" The Indian smiled sedately and started for the double doors. Jane ran toward the general with a sharp cry:
"General—let me explain"
"Explain!" He laughed shortly. "What can you say? You come into my house as a friend—you betray me—you break into my safe—with Woodhouse, whom I'd warned you against, directing your every move. Clever—clever! Jaimihr, do as I tell you. My orderly at once!"
Jane threw herself between the Indian and the doors.
"One moment—before he leaves the room let me tell you he lies? Your Indian lies. It was I who found him here—before that safe!"
"A poor story," the general sniffed. "I expected better of you—after this."
"The truth, General Crandall. I couldn't sleep. I came out here to the balcony to try to make out if the Saxonia was in the bay. He came into the room while I was behind these curtains, locked the doors, and opened the safe."
"It won't go," the general cut in curtly.
"It's the truth—it's got to go!" she cried.
Jaimihr, at a second nod from his master, was approaching the double doors. Jane, leaping in front of them, pushed the Indian back.
"General Crandall, for your own sake—don't let this Indian leave the room. You may regret it—all the rest of your life. He still has a paper—a little paper—he took from that safe. I saw him stick it in his sash."
"Nonsense!"
"Search him!" The girl's voice cracked in hysteria; her face was dead white, with hectic burning spots in each cheek. "I'm not pleading for myself now—for you. Search him before he leaves this room!"
Jaimihr put strong hands on her arms to force her away from the door. His black eyes were laughing down into hers.
"Let me ask him a question first, General Crandall—before he leaves this room."
The governor's face reflected momentary surprise at this change of tack. "Quickly then," he gruffly conceded. Jaimihr Khan stepped back a pace, his eyes meeting the girl's coldly.
"How did you come into the room—when you found me here?" she challenged. The Indian pointed to the double doors over her shoulder. She reached behind her, grasped the knob, and shook it. "Locked!" she announced.
"Why not?" Jaimihr asked. "I locked them after me."
"And the general's door was locked?"
"Yes—yes!" Crandall broke in impatiently. "What's this got to do with"
"Did you lock the general's door?" she questioned the Indian.
"No, Sahibah; you did."
"And I suppose I locked the door to Lady Crandall's room and my door?"
"If they, too, are locked—yes, Sahibah."
"Then why"—Jane's voice quavered almost to a shriek—"why had I failed to lock the double doors—the doors through which you came?"
The Indian caught his breath, and darted a look at the general. The latter, eying him keenly, stepped to his desk and pressed a button.
"Very good; remain here, Jaimihr," he said. Then to Jane: "I will have him searched, as you wish. Then both of you go to the cells until I sift this thing to the bottom."
"General I You wouldn't dare!" She stood aghast.
"Wouldn't I, though? We'll see whether—" A sharp click sent his head jerking around to the right. Jaimihr Khan, at the door to the general's room, was just slipping the key into his girdle, after having turned the lock. His thin face was crinkled like old sheepskin.
"What the devil are you doing?" Crandall exploded.
"If the general sahib is waiting for that bell to be answered—he need not wait longer—it will not be answered," Jaimihr Khan purred.
"What's this—what's this!"
"The wires are cut."
"Cut! Who did that?" The general started for the yellow man. Jaimihr Khan whipped a blue-barreled revolver out of his broad sash and leveled it at his master.
"Back, General Sahib! I cut them. The sahibah's story is true. It was she who came in and found me at the safe."
"My God! You, Jaimihr—you a spy!" The general collapsed weakly into a chair by the desk.
"Some might call me that, my General." Jaimihr's weapon was slowly swinging to cover both the seated man and the girl by the doors. "No need to search that drawer, General Sahib. Your pistol is pointing at you this minute."
"You'll pay for this!" Crandall gasped.
"That may be. One thing I ask you to remember. If one of you makes a move I will kill you both. You are a gallant man, my General; is it not so? Then remember."
Crandall started from his chair, but the uselessness of his bare hands against the snub-nosed thing of blue metal covering him struck home. He sank back with a groan. Keeping them both carefully covered, Jaimihr moved to the desk telephone at the general's elbow. He took from his sash a small piece of paper—the one he had saved from the packet of papers taken from the safe—laid it on the edge of the desk, and with his left hand he picked up the telephone. An instant of tense silence, broken by the wheezing of the general's breath, then
"Nine-two-six, if you please. Yes—yes, who is this? Ah, yes. It is I, Jaimihr Khan. Is all well with you? Good! And Bishop? Slain coming down the Rock—good also!"
Grandall groaned. The Indian continued his conversation imperturbed.
"Veree good! Listen closely. I can not come as I have promised. There is—work—for me here. But all will be well. Take down what I shall tell you." He read from the slip of paper on the desk. "Seven turns to the right, four to the left—press! Two more to the left—press! One to the right. You have that? Allah speed you. Go quickly!"
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"Correct, my General—Room D." Jaimihr smiled as he stepped away from the telephone, his back against the double doors. The sweat stood white on Crandall's brow; his mouth worked in jerky spasms.
"What—what have you done?" he gasped.
"I see the general knows too well," came the Indian's silken response. "I have given the combination of the inner door of Room D in the signal tower to a—friend. He is on his way to the tower. He will be admitted—one of the few men on the Rock who could be admitted at this hour, my General. One pull of the switches in Room D—and where will England's great fleet be then?"
"You yellow devil!" Crandall started to rush the white figure by the doors, but his flesh quailed as the round cold muzzle met it. He staggered back.
"We are going to wait, my General—and you, American Sahibah, who have pushed your way into this affair. We are going to wait—and listen—listen."
The general writhed in agony. Jane, fallen into a chair by the far edge of the desk, had her head buried in her arms, and was sobbing.
"And we are going to think, my General," the Indian's voice purled on. "While we wait we shall think. Who will General Crandall be after to-night—the English sahib who ruled the Rock the night the English fleet was blown to hell from inside the fortress? How many widows will curse when they hear his name? What"
"Jaimihr Khan, what have I ever done to you!" The governor's voice sounded hardly human. His face was blotched and purple.
"Not what you have done, my General—what the English army has done. An old score, General—thirty years old. My father—he was a prince in India—until this English army took away his throne to give it to a lying brother. The army—the English army—murdered my father when he tried to get it back—called it mutiny. Ah, yes, an old score; but by the breath of Allah, to-night shall see it paid!"
The man's eyes were glittering points of white-hot steel. All of his thin white teeth showed like a hound's.
"You dog!" The general feebly wagged his head at the Indian.
"Your dog, my General. Five years your dog, when I might have been a prince. My friend goes up the Rock—step—step—step. Closer—closer to the tower, my General. And Major Bishop—where is he? Ah, a knife is swift and makes no noise"
"What a fool I've been!" Crandall rocked in his chair, and passed a trembling hand before his eyes. Sudden rage turned his bloodshot eyes to where the girl was stretched, sobbing, across the desk. "Your man—the man you protected—it is he who goes to the signal tower, girl!"
"No—no; it can't be," she whispered between the rackings of her throat.
"It is! Only a member of the signal service could gain admittance into the tower to-night. Besides—who was it went with Bishop down the Rock after the dinner to-night? And I—I sent Bishop with him—sent him to his death. He was tricking you all the time. I told you he was. I warned you he was playing with you—using you for his own rotten ends—using you to help kill forty thousand men!"
It needed not the sledge-hammer blows of the stricken Crandall to batter Jane Gerson's heart. She had read too clearly the full story Jaimihr Khan's sketchy comments had outlined. She knew now Captain Woodhouse, spy. The Indian was talking again, his words dropping as molten metal upon their raw souls.
"Forty thousand men! A pleasant thought, my General. Eight minutes up the Rock to the tower when one moves fast. And my friend—ah, he moves veree—veree fast. Eight minutes, and four have already passed. Watch the windows—the windows looking out to the bay, General and Sahibah. They will flame—like blood. Your hearts will stop at the great noise, and then"
A knock sounded at the double doors behind Jaimihr. He stopped short, startled. All listened. Again came the knock. Without turning his eyes from the two he guarded, Jaimihr asked: "Who is it?"
"Woodhouse," came the answer.
Jane's heart stopped. Crandall sat frozen in his seat. Jaimihr turned the key in the lock, and the doors opened. In stepped Captain Woodhouse, helmeted, armed with sword and revolver at waist. He stood facing the trio, his swift eye taking in the situation at once. Crandall half rose from his seat, his face apoplectic.
"Spy! Secret killer of men!" he gasped.
Woodhouse paid no heed to him, but turned to Jaimihr.
"Quick! The combination," he said. "Over the phone—afraid I might not have it right—stopped here on my way to the tower—be there in less than three minutes if you can hold these people."
"Everything is all right?" Jaimihr asked suspiciously.
"You mean Bishop? Yes. Quick, the combination!"
Jaimihr picked the slip of paper containing the formula from the edge of the desk with his disengaged left hand and passed it to Woodhouse.
The latter stretched out his hand, grasped the Indian's with a lightning move, and threw it over so that the latter was off his balance. In a twinkling Woodhouse's left hand had wrenched the revolver from Jaimihr's right and pinioned it behind his back. The whole movement was accomplished in half a breath. Jaimihr Khan knelt in agony, and in peril of a broken wrist, at the white man's feet, disarmed, harmless. Woodhouse put a silver whistle to his lips and blew three short blasts.
A tramp of feet in the hallway outside, and four soldiers with guns filled the doorway.
"Take this man!" Woodhouse commanded.
The Indian, in a frenzy, writhed and shrieked:
"Traitor! English spy! Dog of an unbeliever!"
The soldiers jerked him to his feet and dragged him out; his ravings died away in the passage.
Woodhouse brought his hand up in a salute as he faced General Crandall.
"The other spy, Almer, of the Hotel Splendide, has just been arrested, sir. Major Bishop has taken charge of him and has lodged him in the cells."
A high-pitched scream sounded behind Lady Crandall's door, and a pounding on the panels. Jane Gerson, first to recover from the shock of surprise, ran to unlock the door. Lady Crandall, in a dressing gown, burst into the library and flung herself on her husband.
"George—George! What does all this mean—yells—whistling"
General Crandall gave his wife a pat on the shoulder and put her aside with a mechanical gesture. He took a step toward Woodhouse, who still stood stiffly before the opened doors; the dazed governor walked like a somnambulist.
"Who—who the devil are you, sir?" he managed to splutter.
"I am Captain Cavendish, General." Again the hand came to stiff salute on the visor of the pith helmet. "Captain Cavendish, of the signal service, stationed at Khartum, but lately detached for special service under the intelligence office in Downing Street."
The man's eyes jumped for an instant to seek Jane Gerson's face—found a smile breaking through the lines of doubt there.
"Your papers to prove your identity!" Crandall demanded, still in a fog of bewilderment.
"I haven't any. General Crandall," the other replied, with a faint smile, "or your Indian, Jaimihr Khan, would have placed them in your hands after the search of my room yesterday. I've convinced Major Bishop of my genuineness. however—after we left your house and when the moment for action arrived. A cable to Sir Ludlow-Service, in the Downing Street office, will confirm my story. Meanwhile I am willing to go under arrest if you think best."
"But—but I don't understand, Captain—er—Cavendish. You posed as a German—as an Englishman."
"Briefly, General, a girl secretly in the pay of the Downing Street office—Louisa Schmidt,—Josepha, the cigar girl, whom you ordered locked up a few hours ago—is the English representative in the Wilhelmstrasse at Berlin. She learned of a plan to get a German spy in your signal tower a month before war was declared, reported it to London, and I was summoned from Khartum to London to play the part of the German spy. At Berlin, where she had gone from your own town of Gibraltar to meet me, she arranged to procure me a number in the Wilhelmstrasse through the agency of a dupe named Capper"
"Capper! Good Lord!" Crandall stammered.
"With the number I hurried to Alexandria. Woodhouse—Captain Woodhouse, from Wady .jpg)
"And you came here to save Gibraltar—and the fleet from German spies?" Crandall put the question dazedly.
"There were only two, General—Almer and your servant, Jaimihr. We have them now. You may order the release of Louisa Schmidt."
"The captain has overlooked one other—the most dangerous one of all. General Crandall." Jane stepped up to where the governor stood and threw back her hands with an air of submission. "Her name is Jane Gerson, of New York, and she knew all along that this gentleman was deceiving you—she had met him, in fact, three weeks before on a railroad train in France."
The startled eyes of Gibraltar's master looked first at the set features of the man, then to the girl's flushed face. Little lines of humor crinkled about the corners of his mouth.
"Captain Cavendish—or Woodhouse, make this girl a prisoner—your prisoner, sir!"