CHAPTER XXVI

SECONDS OUT OF THE RING

"Believe we've met before, Captain Arden," said the Apex. "Somehow I can't get into the way of calling you Kit."

"Don't bother to try," advised Storm. "Somehow, I can't get into the way of calling you father."

Ezra Surcon sat down again on his throne, taking in every detail of Storm's appearance with a keenly appreciative eye. It was a strange meeting between father and son, that. Family love is mostly a matter of long proximity, and there had been none of that between those two. No affection was in their clashing glances--Storm's interrogating, half-mirthful, accusing, dangerous, assured, level; Surcon's full of frank admiration blended with a trace of fear. Neither hate nor love was in the air, yet the atmosphere bristled with something far more potent. Circumstances had thrown them together to do battle on opposite sides of the law; battle to the death, fought out with words alone right up to the final _mêlée_--surely the strangest encounter in the annals of crime.

"You're like your mother, son," said Surcon slowly. "You've got that cornfield Saxon hair of hers, and her eyes. And yet you're _me_.... I used to stand up that way, once--that proud, reckless way...."

There was a short silence, while Storm met his father's gaze inscrutably, and Morini propped the door, an automatic swinging unobtrusively in one hand. "You're clever--like I am," said Surcon. "You found me--probably nobody else could have."

"Yeh!" agreed Storm. "But you're like Lew--you flatter yourself. You weren't so very difficult, although I grant you--every time--there was a lot of luck in it. And now the game's up. I've got you. What're you going to do about it?"

Surcon raised his eyebrows.

"Do about it?" he repeated.

"You said it! You're right where I want you. Hear me! I'll tell you a home truth you missed through not bringing me up yourself instead of slinging me into a workhouse when my mother died. And that home truth is that there's one big wad of conceit swollen up above your ears, which same has just landed you in the fishiest kettle of fish you ever dived into in your sweet life! You think you're sitting on several square miles of velvet. You've got me, you've got Miss Hawthorne, and you figure it out you've got every card in the pack neatly stacked up in your own private mitt. Guess again! Maybe you think I'm bluffing. Guess twice more! I never put up a bluff unless I've got an even chance of pulling out if it's called. That applies now. Scotland Yard have got your little dossier nicely tied up in pink ribbon, just waiting to travel along to the Public Prosecutor. And d'you know where you'll be when that dossier makes its speech? On the drop, Big Triangle, plumb on the drop! It's all sealed up, because just now this game happens to be a private one, and I don't want any policemen sitting in if I can help it. But if I don't rock into Scotland Yard by midnight--the witching hour!--the seals'll be broken, and that means the hangman'll be earning big money about eight weeks later. Which prison'd you fancy? Pentonville--Wormwood Scrubs--Holloway--Brixton? ... I expect it could be arranged."

Surcon stared as though he could not believe his ears. Here was his prisoner talking calmly about executions, and all the minor troubles that were coming to the Big Triangle, when all the time Morini had the bead on him, and would use it at a word! And, in spite of their terse, slangy phraseology, Storm's words carried conviction in every ice-flecked syllable.

"When I say I know everything, I'm understanding the case," Storm went on. "God Himself couldn't raise a longer charge sheet than I'm going to hand out to you right now. We'll take it in tabloids. All clear? Then I'll shoot. One: I know all about your treble life and your fake deaths. I know the beaver who was hoicked out of the Thames last night was no more Oscar Raegenssen than he was the King of England. There never was an Oscar Raegenssen--except you in fancy dress! I've proved that, and there's a little _billet-doux_ from the Home Office pathologist himself to prove it twice over. Not to mention Miss Hawthorne's little piece. I know why you loved that tin can you called a safe in your office--I've slid out the shelves and opened up the dinkiest little cubby-hole any crook could want for a lie-low. Why, I've even got your photographs in your two side-line costumes. Olaf the Seabird, complete with false beard, comes into the picture gallery. Just to show you there's no ill-feeling, I'll give you a free tip which I'm afraid you'll never have a chance of using. Here it is. If you must disguise yourself like a dime-novelette detective, never get in the way of an auto. You're liable to be knocked silly, and then you forget to fake up your voice--suppose anyone's snooping around who knows both of you, that kind of lets a whole menagerie of cats out of your bag."

"I'm glad you allowed the element of luck," remarked Surcon ironically, although a certain tenseness in his voice spoilt the effect.

Storm flicked some ash from his cigarette.

"Share and share alike! If I was lucky in that, you were the most doggone lucky crook that ever went on a jag. Suppose the man detailed to look after your mischief had been anyone but me? Think he'd've let you go off smiling? You get a third free guess! Only I don't like my relatives being pushed through traps in execution sheds--it's rotten bad for the health of the genealogical tree. Besides, the papers'd make such a song about it. _Apex Caught By His Son.... Captain Arden, Police Hero, Gets Father's Death Warrant_.... Thanks all the same, but I don't laugh at jokes like that!"

"And what is your alternative?"

"You'll hear that all in good time," said Storm. "Wait till I've finished my speech, and don't interrupt. It's rude. Right! Item Two: I know exactly why you sent your cheap Bowery lead-slingers clinking for the men you did. I know why Cardan was killed, and Marker nearly, just like I know why Hannassay died. Why, I've seen plate glass less transparent than you! The amazing, everlasting, all-fired and brass-bound miracle is that even a mutt like old fat Teal didn't have the bracelets on you days and weeks ago. I could've done it; except that, as I've explained, it'd've been embarrassingly public. A day or two late, you decided it was time one of your incarnations faded out, and you got away with it. You kidded Teal, but you'd have to put up a bit of whole cloth big enough to cover the world before you got me guessing! And I think that tots up to about _that_. You never did anything particularly mysterious. I saw you stick up Moraine's, and all the world knows how you wangled the getaway from Marlborough Street Police Station. That was smart, I'll say. But it didn't matter. A few little fish don't matter when there's a whacking great whale jumping round the net. And that net is now blocked in with sheet iron and reënforced concrete tough enough to hold even you! D'you doubt me--d'you think I'm bluffing still--or shall I fire off another tankful?"

Surcon said nothing. As Storm's staccato sentences shot out their deadly burden, the Apex had receded further and further into his throne, his jaw thrust out, his pale blue eyes gleaming like pin-points of azure flame, his whole crouching position resembling the compression of a wild animal about to spring. A crackling electricity had oozed into the air. The trace of uneasiness which had been in Surcon's eyes from the first had grown now into a raging devil of fear, with hate, desperation, and fury leaping in to join forces with it and bolster up its fundamental weakness. Storm's gun-metal grey eyes, drilling without a waver into his father's blue ones, were hard and pitiless.

"The Roman father is an old _cliché_," continued Storm's quiet, even, compelling voice--quiet enough it was in actual physical fact, but the explosive, dominating exclamation marks stabbed everywhere, relentlessly, through the superficial placidity. "But I'm on the road with a new line of goods: the Roman son! You can't expect mercy from me. If you do, you're wasting good day-dreams. You've killed men. One man you killed with your own hands, so Prester John told me, and I'm inclined to believe him. Loonies--conceited loonies--like you, don't take much stock of a human life or two when their own hides are in danger of being tanned. I've killed men, too, but not to salve my head-swelling. Because you're a murderer you've got to die. That's the law, and in your particular case I think it's a damned sound law. So sound that I'm here to supervise, personally, the carrying out of the sentence. Maybe you thought you were one hell of a bright boy catching me first shot with that taxi gambit. Your fourth guess! A babe in arms 'd've seen that springe. It stuck out ten miles! I let myself be roped because I didn't know where to find you, and finding you happened to be the most important act in the play. You thought you'd got a sucker, and now you've got to get it into the ivory over your ears that I'm a red-hot Tartar. I'm out gunning for Triangles! Once you're off the map I'm going to bounce Lew, and anyone else who horns in on the bouncing 'll get a free passage to Hell along with him. Lew won't be the only one. I guess the world can muddle along well enough without Gat either, for that matter, and there're a few others who'll share the same cemetery."

Morini himself was erect now, and the finger which crooked round the hair-trigger of his automatic quivered eagerly. His baby blue eyes were cold. A man of good education and more than average intelligence, he was able to judge exactly how risky every second of Storm's continued life was. Morini wasn't fool enough to mistake case-hardened facts for an empty bluff.

"Say the word, Chief," he grated. "You can't keep him now. He knows too much. If he gets away we're all done, and he's so slippery you can't guarantee to hold him till he's dead."

"Yeh! You Gat!" Storm swung round. "Shoot and then get measured for a coffin! You poor damned goop! Haven't you got it into your bony coconut yet that I wouldn't have come rubing into this party without being sure I was going out again O.K.? I've told the Assistant Commissioner that if I'm not back in his office by twelve to-night he's to open the envelope I've given him and act on what he finds in it. By eight o'clock this morning there was a watch on every port in England. An armed watch, Gat, with photographs and descriptions of every big fish in the Triangle pond. You're on that list! And you're not a Big Triangle--you'd want more savvy than you're ever likely to have before you could disguise yourself so's they wouldn't recognise you. Take it from uncle! Try not to be a worse oaf than God made you, for the love of Mike! Hear me! This is the way you get out of the mulligatawny. Make your boss see the game's up. Once he's gone you stand a chance of staying. Without him there'd be no Triangle. It takes a porky slab of hot dog like he's got to run a bucket shop as big as this. And once there's no Triangle I might feel kinder and more loving towards my fellow-men. Which I don't mind telling you I don't at this moment. You've got a gun. Take your choice. Certain death or an even chance!"

Then Storm turned his back on the gunman, as though he were never in doubt of the alternative that gentleman would select, and faced Surcon once more.

"Suppose you kill me," he rapped out, "Teal'll get you--sure! Maybe you'd like to hear exactly what evidence Teal's got to hang you with? Well, take it in pills again. One: he knows now you're Oscar Raegenssen. Two: I've left him data enough to prove you're Snooper Brome too! Chew that bullet, sweetheart!"

Surcon half-rose from his chair, white to the lips. That was a shot he had never expected to hear blazed at him. The one secret he had thought he had held even against Storm's acumen had been flourished as certain knowledge with a calm assurance which staggered him. It was uncanny. Yet he did not lose hold of practical thought. Almost in the same flash his brain had seen and seized upon the only way of escape which now lay open to him, and already he was whizzing it through his imagination, moulding and developing it.

"That gave you a jolt, I'll bet!" Storm continued. "I guessed when I saw you in Raegenssen's house the night I burgled it. I was sure when I found you were the man who'd raked Mattock and Joan Sands into the Triangle. Gosh! you're so easy, I wonder you've got this far! Right. Let's get on. Three: given the first two scoops I've mentioned they can prove you were the man who directed the sticking up of Moraine's. Four: they won't be bothered much with proving you ordered Miss Hawthorne to be killed by Morini after she'd seen you that night in Hamilton Place and your Raegenssen costume. Five: Raegenssen was the registered owner of the Billingsgate sawmill. Bad break of yours, by the way, forgetting to sign the Deed of Sale in the Raegenssen handwriting. I suppose you bought the place before you'd fixed up what handwriting Oscar was to have. Six: Prester John's evidence that you murdered, with typhus bugs, a man who wanted to know too much about you. Seven: having proved you _are_ the Big Triangle, you're therefore responsible for the deaths of several people in the Piccadilly Circus beanfeast. I guess that little bunch'll weigh heavy enough in the scales to send you to Hell express, as soon as they can get you convicted and string you up. Now crow!"

Storm paused and reached for his cigarette case. He gave one glance at Morini, and saw that the gunman was leaning against the door again with his automatic directed straight at his, Storm's, heart.

Storm lighted a cigarette and splintered the match between his fingers, watching Surcon intently for every sign of the effect his incisive sentences had had. Surcon's head was bent forward, so that he looked at Storm from under the rim of his prominent brows.

"Understand me?" asked Storm softly. "Got that little mouthful under your hat? Is it walking around squeaking at you? ... It's your cue. Do you kill me and Miss Hawthorne--and hang? Do you lock us up and try making a bolt for it--and hang? Or do you walk out into the next room and shoot yourself without any fuss? Once upon a time your family name must've meant something to you. D'you want the initials on a prison wall, just over an inconspicuous grave, and your own life history minutely recorded in every book on crime that's written from now onwards? Or have you got a spark of decency left in you? Have you got guts enough to stay dead like a gentleman? It's your shout. Pay up, and nobody'll ever see the bill. Don't square it my way, and you go to Tophet through a mud bath."

It seemed for a moment as if Surcon was searching his son's face for any trace of relenting, but Storm's features were set in a granite, ruthless, inexorable mask. And then the burning rage crept back into Surcon's eyes.

"Are you much better than a parricide?" demanded Surcon fiercely, literally shaking with passion. "Isn't your idea just to shelve the responsibility for the act--and be the cause of it just the same?"

"Put it that way, if you like," returned Storm icily. "It happens to satisfy what conscience I've got. And since I hold the whip hand, what I say goes!"

The effrontery of his manner passed over the heads of his hearers. They were becoming inured to it. His crisp, self-possessed manner had ladled them out such a succession of incredible blows that their senses were growing numb. He coolly usurped the position of dictator, when all the time he was at their mercy--domineered, bullied, insulted, mocked them until their wrath towered over him in great boiling waves. And through it all he smiled serenely, punching home the facts he had to deliver with the efficient force of a piledriver. He didn't play his part as by rights an unarmed prisoner should have played it--didn't give a hoot for the superiority of their position--didn't give a damn for their spleen. One might have thought he had the entire British Army drawn up in a hollow square round the house in Buckingham Gate, just waiting to rush in if anybody started rough-housing. Storm was his nickname, and now they had some idea how he had earned it. He was Storm. It didn't count with him that several unpleasantly large hornet's nests were jazzing round his ears. He played out his lone hand with a blithe confidence they couldn't cope with.

And he had got under Morini's skin.

"You've got to give him his, Chief," snapped Gat. "He said the instructions to the bulls won't be opened till midnight--that gives us more than twelve hours to make our getaway. We can go down to one of the Channel seaside places and go off in small boats. We ought to be able to make the French coast. It's risky, but it's been done before. He may be your son, but you needn't see him shot. I'll do it. You can't cling on to that stunt of locking him away--he knows too much."

"You said it!" murmured Storm. "And I know a whole lot more than I've spilled this morning. Shall I go on? If you'd like another dose, you're welcome! You moron! Hear me, Gat! Don't you think I'd seen that getaway scheme years before it ever penetrated your maggoty skull? Keep on hoping! Why, you cheap C3 cretin, by this time the whole Channel Squadron and the North Sea Fleet are ranging up and down looking for just such an easy getaway. Think again, Gat, and think fast!"

"I'll give you my answer, Captain Arden," said Surcon. "Morini, bring Miss Hawthorne here."

As the door closed, Storm sized up his father. Surcon seemed to bulk bigger than ever, huddled up in that ornate throne; and Storm knew that, immensely strong as he was, he would stand no chance against such a giant of a man. Surcon must have read his thoughts, for a bitter smile touched the thin lips.

"No hope that way, Captain Arden. You get your strength from me, and the tree is bigger than the branch."

Storm smiled back, and for a second a ray of humanity relieved the stern set of his face.

"Sometimes you appeal to me--your nerve's nearly as good as mine," he said.

Nevertheless, Surcon's action gave him furiously to think. The Apex hadn't reacted according to schedule. Somewhere up that enigmatic sleeve was a trump card, and Storm had an uneasy suspicion that he could guess what it was without much chance of error. As he had said, he never put up a bluff without having an even chance of pulling through if it crashed. That even chance had suddenly tumbled down the market to about three to one against. And yet, for all that momentary misgiving, he never changed his calm, arrogant poise. No need to show your bluff till all the other cards are on the table, if you can avoid it...

Surcon had put on a black silk handkerchief by way of a mask, and was pulling his hat down over his eyes.

"A slight precaution, though I doubt its necessity," he explained, and then Susan was outside the door.

Storm recognised her footsteps, but Morini came in alone. Affecting lack of interest, Storm heard every word of conversation which passed between Morini and his Chief, and Kit's brow furrowed for a second as he endeavoured to account for what Mecklen had seen.

And then Susan was in the room, and a little of Storm's grimness relaxed as he heard her gasp of surprise.

"Hullo, kid," he drawled cheerfully. "Sleep well? I hear Lew was a naughty boy last night. Don't worry--I'm going to strafe ole Lew very soon!"

"How did you get here?" She had taken her cue from him, and was smiling, playing up gloriously to him. "Don't say they got you after all?"

"I think not," Storm said carefully. "The general impression at the moment is that I've got _them_!"

Surcon's smile distorted his tight mouth into a cryptic grimace.

"Morini--fetch all the men who are in the building. Make sure Mecklen comes."

Once again Gat departed.

Storm stepped off the daïs and went to Susan. His back was to Surcon, which fact gave him an opportunity to wink encouragingly at her. His grin was cheerfulness itself, but she did not like the metallic light which lay behind his expressive eyes. He took her arm and led her back to the platform, and she thrilled to the cool steadiness of his hand.

Men began to file into the room, taking their places at the benches without speaking. Clearly the vanity of the Triangle had made him summon such portentous assemblies before, for the men moved like a well-trained company of soldiers at Church Parade. Storm had time to be amused.

"Mecklen!"

All the men were in their seats, and the Apex spoke out resonantly. Lew came forward sheepishly.

"Take that girl!"

Two men in the front jumped up and caught Susan by the arms. They hurried her on to the platform, against the huge silver triangle, and began to tie her wrists to two of the corners, so that the base ran across her back. She fought desperately, striking out at their faces with her clenched fists, but with a couple of sulphurous ejaculations as the first blows got home they closed in and gripped her arms, holding her helpless.

Morini was standing beside Storm, his automatic swinging ostentatiously at the "ready" in case of any attempt to go to the girl's assistance. But Storm made no move to attack. He stepped back, folding his arms so that the hands came in the armholes of his coat, and under cover of the cloth he was working away at the sleeves of his bullet-proof vest.

And all the time he cursed silently, although his face never betrayed his kindling fury. He'd been caught! His precious plot had had a link in it so weak it wouldn't have carried an emaciated guinea-pig, and he'd never seen the flaw. He'd plumbed the uttermost profundities of multitude; he'd attained dizzy pinnacles of boobery; he'd wallowed in oceans of sublime insanity. To Bill Kennedy that morning he had confessed that in the past he'd been a mug, and he'd sworn he was going to atone for it--instead of which he'd rolled out of an ordinary frying-pan into a fire that was more like a roaring blast furnace....

Susan was bound, now, and the two who had done it were back in their pews, rubbing bruised shins and muttering luridly.

"You have a gun, Mecklen," said the Apex. "You were told to kill Miss Hawthorne, and you disobeyed. There is still time."

Lew took his revolver from his pocket and looked from it to his leader. Brute as he was, there was something ghastly about such a cold-blooded murder which he found hard to stomach, and he frowned doubtfully, as though unwilling to comprehend. Surcon returned the look with a remorseless determination gleaming in his blue eyes. Slowly Mecklen raised the gun....

"One moment!" The Apex turned to Storm, and that deep, sonorous intonation filled the room like a chant of doom. "You may be less sure of yourself now, Captain Arden. It is now my turn to offer you a choice.... Take Miss Hawthorne and go free to report at Scotland Yard. Resign. And then go abroad for three months and forget all about the Alpha Triangle. Refuse those terms----"

"And----?" prompted Storm, very quietly.

"And Mecklen will not be disobedient a second time."

Storm looked at the girl. She was standing quite still now, her head erect, and a light of proud defiance in her eyes.

"Tell him to go to blazes!"

Her voice rang out with bell-like clarity, and there was not a hint of faltering in it. Storm swallowed a lump that had come into his throat. His head bowed, as if in the agony of making his decision, but all the while his hands fumbled away swiftly and surely at his arms. Another second....

At last he raised his head and his cold eyes swept from Mecklen to Morini, from Morini to Ezra Surcon, _alias_ Bulsaid.

"Sure thing--you great little wonderful kid!" he cried, and his hands leapt into view with lightning-like rapidity.

Three shots reverberated as one. The men in their chairs, watching, spell-bound, saw Mecklen clutch his chest, sway, and sag to the floor with a long sighing groan. They saw Morini reel back, clawing convulsively at a jaw which Storm's heavy-calibre bullet had smashed and all but torn from its sockets. They saw Storm himself, struck over the breast-bone by Morini's fractional-second-late shot, stagger and then, miraculously recover himself....

And then Storm was on the daïs, shielding Susan with his body. One gun-laden hand, resting on his hip, roved from face to face of the men still sitting as though paralysed, in the body of the room; the other focused on the Apex.

"There's my answer! _Now_ crow, you second-hand Gorgonzolas!" he mocked them.