The Fourth Plague (16 page)

Festini turned and led the way from the room. He waited till Il Bue re-padlocked the door, then he stepped out of the shed, slipping down his mask.

The fresh air came to him like a sweet, refreshing draught; it seemed to him that he had tasted the very atmosphere of death and desolation in that tiny room; that it was already tainted with the plague he was about to spread wide-cast.

He made no other attempt to see the girl; he was satisfied with that one interview. He remained in his room, reading by the aid of a portable electric lamp such comments of the Press upon the “Red Hand” as his agents had collected.

At ten o'clock there were two new arrivals. In one of these Festini was particularly interested; it was the priest he had secured for the marriage ceremony.

Psychologists have endeavoured to get at the state of Festini's mind; to analyse by set formula the exact proportions. Was he wholly villain? Were the fantastic acts of chivalry, preposterous as they were, remembering the circumstances in which they were displayed, indications of a better nature?

Tillizini, in his exhaustive analysis of the man's character, had attributed such acts as this contemplated marriage as merely evidence of habit. Festini's long association with men and women of his class had endowed him with an habitual respect for certain conventions. This was Tillizini's estimate, and was probably an accurate one, for he knew the man.

The priest he had chosen had been brought post-haste from Italy, and had travelled night and day. He was a man known to the association as being “safe”: he himself was suspected of complicity in certain outrages which had shocked Italy in the year before the great trial. He himself had stood with the other sixty prisoners in a cage in the criminal court, but, thanks to ingenious perjury, he had escaped punishment.

Festini greeted him without cordiality, with the grave respect which a true son of the Church shows to his spiritual superior, and with the faint hint of patronage which the greater intellect instinctively adopts towards the lesser.

He gave orders for the priest's accommodation, and, after the brief interview, was again left alone.

It was near midnight when Festini threw himself down on a truckle bed to snatch a few hours' sleep. In the early horns of the morning his spies would bring him news of the Premier's reply. He fell into an uneasy, fitful sleep, a sleep disturbed by bad dreams, such as were not usual with him.

There came a light knock and he went to the door. Il Bue was waiting.

“What is it?” asked Festini.

“One of the brethren has just come in,” said the man, who was palpably disturbed. “He came on his cycle from where he has been watching the London road, and he says that some soldiers are marching from London.”

Festini made a gesture of impatience.

“Did you wake me to tell me that?” he asked, irritably. “Haven't you been long enough in England, my friend, to know that soldiers have nothing whatever to do with police work? This is not Italy, it is England. Go—tell your scout to return to his post, to watch not for the army, but for Tillizini and his friends.”

He went back to his room and again lay on the bed, pulling a soft, camel-hair rug over him. He tossed from side to side but could not sleep; he got up after a little while, and went out. A man was keeping guard outside the door.

“Go to Catrina,” he said, “and tell her to make me some chocolate.”

A few minutes later the woman brought him in a steaming bowl on a tray. She set it before him and he acknowledged it with a curt word of thanks, when a thought occurred to him.

“Catrina,” he said, calling her back, “your lady is well?”

“Yes,
padrone
,” she replied. “I saw her two hours ago, before she was asleep.”

Festini nodded.

“See her again now,” he said, “I will go up with you.”

Taking a lamp from the bracket in the narrow passage of the house, the woman led the way upstairs, and Festini followed.

He waited outside the door whilst the woman unlocked it and entered. He heard a smothered exclamation.

“Padrone!” cried the woman, wildly. “Padrone!”

He rushed into the room. The little bed in the corner was empty. The window was open and three of the bars were missing. Marjorie Meagh had gone!

XVI. —TILLIZINI ADDRESSES THE HOUSE

THOUGH IT WAS PAST midnight the streets of London were alive with people; shops were open, lights blazed from windows which ordinarily would have been in darkness. The motor services which carried the Londoner to and from his home were still running; special editions of the evening papers were on sale in the streets, and about the House of Commons, where the crowd grew in intensity, they found a ready sale.

Between Whitehall and Victoria Street some thirty thousand people had assembled, but the police had no difficulty in controlling the assembly or in securing a passage way for the constant stream of cars which were passing to and from the House of Commons. The character of the crowd was an interesting one. These were no idle sightseers, attracted by the chance of a little excitement; it was the silk-hatted middle class of England, overcoated, muffled, bespectacled, waiting patiently for news which meant all the difference between life and death to them.

For once in its history the House of Commons was sitting in secret session. At eleven o'clock that night, by the Speaker's direction, the galleries had been cleared, and strangers had been excluded, not only from the lobby, but from the precincts of the House. Parliament had resolved itself into a National Jury.

At five minutes after twelve a great car, covered with dust, came slowly along Whitehall. It bore three small lamps on its radiator, arranged in the form of a triangle. Unchallenged the car passed Bridge Street and into Palace Yard. About the entrance of the House were a crowd of policemen, but they made a way for the tall man in the dusty coat who sprang from the seat by the side of the driver. Two men were waiting for him; Hilary George, M.P., was one, and Inspector Crocks the other.

The three passed into the interior of the House and made their way to a small Committee room which had been prepared for them.

“Well?” asked Crocks. His face was of an unusual pallor, and he spoke with the irritability which is peculiar to the man undergoing a great nervous strain.

Tillizini slowly divested himself of his great coat, laid it across a chair, and walked to the fire. He stood for a while, warming his hands at the blaze; then he spoke.

“I have located them,” he said, “definitely.”

“Thank God!” said Crocks.

“There is no doubt?” asked Hilary. Tillizini shook his head. He took a book from his inside pocket, opened it, and extracted three slips of paper. They were advertisements cut from a newspaper of the week before.

“I don't know,” he said, “whether you have noticed these?”

They bent over the table, the three heads together, reading the advertisement.

“I cannot understand it,” said Hilary; “this is an advertisement offering good prices for pigeons.” He examined the other. “This is the same,” he said.

“They're all the same,” said Tillizini, quietly. “Do you notice that they advertise that they want old pigeons?”

Hilary nodded.

“The address is at a place in London. The man who advertised had thousands of replies, and has made thousands of purchases, too. Throughout the week basket after basket of birds has come consigned to him at the various London termini; they have been collected by the agents of the ‘Red Hand' and forwarded to Festini.”

“But why?” asked Crocks, puzzled. “He's not going to start a pigeon-shooting competition?”

Tillizini laughed. He had walked back to the fire and was bending over it, his hands almost touching the flames.

“If you will believe me,” he said, “I have been looking for that advertisement for quite a long time.” He straightened himself and stood with his back to the fire, his hands behind him. Then he asked suddenly: “How is the ‘Red Hand' to distribute the germs of this plague? Has that thought ever occurred to you? How can they, without danger to themselves, spread broadcast the seeds of the Black Death?”

“Good Heavens!” said Hilary, as the significance of the move suddenly dawned upon him.

“To-morrow morning,” Tillizini went on, “if the Premier's reply is unfavourable, they will release these thousands of pigeons, and release also, in a portable form, sufficient of the culture to spread death in whichever neighbourhood the pigeon lands. Naturally, being old birds, they will fly straight back to the homes they have left. It is very ingenious. They might of course have done the same thing by post, but there was a certain amount of risk attached to that. The present method is one which would appeal to Festini. I arrested a man this afternoon who has been collecting the birds. He is obviously one of the ‘Red Hand,' though he protests against such an imputation.”

“What is to be done?” asked Hilary. “You had better see the Prime Minister at once.”

The door opened and a young man came in hurriedly.

“Is Professor Tillizini here?” he asked.

Hilary indicated the detective.

“Will you come at once, Professor? The Prime Minister wishes you to stand at the bar of the House to explain to the honourable members exactly the position.”

Tillizini nodded.

He followed his conductor along the broad corridor, across the lobby, through two swing doors. He suddenly found himself in a large chamber; it gave him the impression of being dimly lighted. On either side he saw row after row of faces rising in tiers. At the further end, behind a big table surmounted by a gold mace, sat a wigged and gowned figure on a canopied chair. Near the table on his left a man rose and spoke to the Speaker. Tillizini could not hear the words he said. The moment afterwards the grave figure in the wig and gown invited him forward.

Tillizini knew something of the august character of this legislative assembly; he knew, since it was his business to know, with what jealousy it guarded its doors against the unelected stranger, and he experienced a feeling of unreality as he walked along the floor of the House and made his way, at the invitation of the Premier's beckoning finger, to a place on the Front Bench.

The House was in silence. A faint murmur of “Hear, Hear,” had greeted him, but that had died away. A strange figure he made, still powdered with the fine dust of the road, unshaven, grimy.

He sank down on the cushioned bench by the Premier's side, and looked with curious eyes at the Mother of Parliaments.

Amidst dead silence the Prime Minister rose and addressed the Speaker.

“Mr. Speaker,” he said, “it is within my province, had I so desired, to have asked you to vacate the chair and for the House to resolve itself into a Committee. Under those circumstances we should have had extensive powers, one such power being our right to summon any stranger before us to give evidence.

“But the time is so very short, and the issues are so very serious, that I have asked you to rule, as an extraordinary ruling, that Professor Tillizini be allowed to address the House from this place.”

The Prime Minister sat down, and the bearded man in the chair looked at Tillizini, and nodded again. For a moment the professor did not understand its significance; then a whispered word from the Premier at his side brought him to his feet, a little embarrassed, a little bewildered.

He spoke hesitatingly, halting now and then for a word, thanking the House for its indulgence and for the remarkable privilege it had granted him.

“The Prime Minister,” he went on, “has asked me to give you a brief outline of the history of the ‘Red Hand.' He thinks, and I agree, that you should be made fully aware of one fact only that the ‘Red Hand' threatens to perform.”

For five minutes he traced the history of the organization; its growth from the famous Three Finger Society of Sicily; he spoke briefly of its crimes, both on the Continent and in America, for he had the details at his finger-tips, and he himself had been engaged in unravelling many of the mysteries which had surrounded the work of these men.

“I do not know,” he said, “what plans this Parliament has formed for ridding the country of so dangerous and so terrible a force. No plan,” he spoke earnestly and emphatically, and punctuated his speech with characteristic gestures, “which you may decide upon, can be effective unless it includes some system of physical extermination. I do not make myself clear, perhaps,” he said, hurriedly, “although I have a very large acquaintance with your language.” He emphasized his point with one finger on the palm of his hand. “These men are going to destroy you and your kind. Believe me, they will have no compunction; the plague will be spread throughout England unless you take the most drastic steps within the next few hours. There is no existing law on the statute books which exactly provides for the present situation. You must create a new method to deal with a new crime, and, Mr. Speaker, whatever this House does, whatever steps it takes, however dreadful may be the form of punishment which it, in its wisdom, may devise, it cannot be too drastic or too severe to deal with the type of criminal organization which the ‘Red Hand' represents. I can, if I wish,” he said, with a smile, “arrest fifty members of the ‘Red Hand' to-night. I could, with a little care, succeed in assassinating Festini.”

He spoke in a matter-of-fact tone, as though assassination were everyday work, and a little shiver ran through the House. He was sensible to such undefinable impressions in others.

“You do not like the word?” he said, with a smile, “and neither do I. I used it because I felt that it was a word which would be more in keeping with the facts from your point of view. To me, some removals are justified; they are more, they are necessary. One must meet cunning with cunning, crime with crime. The law does not adequately meet all modern crime, even the English law. Science has produced a new type of criminal; but the modern parliaments of the world have not as yet devised a new type of punishment. The criminal code requires drastic revisions, as drastic as those which it received when it erased from its statute book such awful and vindictive punishments as were accorded to sheep-stealers.”

He went on to tell as much of his later discoveries as he felt it was expedient to announce to the House. He could never overcome his suspicion of crowds. The House of Commons, with its serried ranks of members, was a crowd to him, an intellectual, a sympathetic and brilliant crowd, but a crowd nevertheless, which might contain, for aught he knew, one man who would betray his plans to the enemy.

The House gasped when told the story of the pigeons.

“I understand,” he said, “that you have an Act in contemplation; the terms of that Act have been briefly communicated to me, and I can tell you, Mr. Speaker, and the members of this House, that there is no provision in that measure which is not justified by the circumstances. Within seven days,” he said, solemnly, “this country will be ravaged by the most malignant form of epidemic disease that has been known in modern history. The horrors of the great plague of London will be multiplied, the ports of every foreign country will be closed to your commerce; you will be shunned by every grain-bearing ship that sails the sea.

“You are face to face, not only with death in its most terrible form, but with starvation, with anarchy, with civil war perhaps. And yet, knowing this, I tell you that you would be false to your great traditions if you paid one single penny to this infamous confederacy.”

He sat down amidst a murmured cheer.

In a few minutes he had walked out behind the Speaker's chair, and was in the Prime Minister's sitting-room. That statesman came in soon afterwards.

“The Act will pass to-night,” he said; “the Lords are sitting, and I hope to get the Assent early in the morning. Can you rest to-night, Professor?”

Tillizini shook his head.

“There is no rest for me to-night,” he said.

He looked at his watch. The hands pointed a quarter after twelve. An attendant brought in a tray with coffee. After he had retired, the Prime Minister asked—

“You are satisfied with such steps as we have taken?”

Tillizini nodded.

“Yes, I think the number will be sufficient.”

“We have sent four infantry brigades by route march to-night,” said the Premier. “The cavalry and artillery are coming from Colchester.”

“The destroyers?” asked Tillizini.

“They left Chatham at sunset to-night with orders to steam slowly up the river.” Tillizini nodded again.

“There will be one waiting for you at Tilbury,” said the Prime Minister, “that was in accordance with your wishes.”

A few minutes later Tillizini entered his car, wrapped in his great coat, and the great Mercedes sped noiselessly out through the guarded gate, through the press of people in Whitehall, into Trafalgar Square, then turned to the right along the Strand. It slowed down to pass a market van, which had emerged from the street leading from Waterloo Bridge. As it did so a man walked quickly from the sidewalk and leapt on to the footboard of the car.

He was a middle-aged man, poorly dressed, and he was apparently Italian, for it was in that language he said—

“Signor Tillizini?”

“Yes,” said Tillizini, in the same language.

The man made no reply. His hand went up with a lightning jerk. Before his fingers had closed on the trigger, Tillizini's had grasped the pistol near the trigger guard, He half rose to his feet and, with a quick swing of his body such as wrestlers employ, he pulled the man into the car. It was all over in a second. Before the passers-by and the loungers about the sidewalk realized what had happened, the man was in the car, his pistol reposed in Tillizini's pocket, and the Italian detective's foot was pressing lightly but suggestively on his throat.

“Keep very still,” said Tillizini, bending over. “Put your hands up, so.”

The man obeyed with a whimper of pain; then something hard and cold snapped around his wrists.

“Now you may sit up,” said Tillizini.

He dragged the man to his feet and threw him into a corner seat. From his breast pocket he produced a little electric lamp and flashed it in the man's face.