CHAPTER VI

IMMIGRATION OF THE UNGODLY

Storm breakfasted with Hannassay on the morning his lordship left for his holiday. It was an unexpected invitation, but Lord Hannassay came to the reason of it without delay.

"I have made arrangements for you to be given complete charge of the case," he said. "You will probably get the official intimation when you reach the Yard."

His usual abruptness of manner was conspicuously absent. He spoke restrainedly and rather artificially, like a man who has planned out his speech in advance and intends to adhere rigidly to a premeditated sequence of words.

"You will have _carte blanche_, and you may use any means you think fit within--and, by special arrangement, without--the law to round up the Alpha Triangle. I am convinced that the menace with which we are faced is the greatest in the history of crime."

"I'm glad to have your support," said Storm. "I more than scent rodents myself! But I thought I was in for some job persuading the authorities I wasn't an alarmist."

The peer nodded absently and stirred his coffee. He seemed hardly to have heard Kit's remark, and when he spoke again it was in the same mechanical way as before, as though he neither anticipated nor required interruption.

"Strictly between ourselves, Captain Arden, I know the secret of the Alpha Triangle." He pushed away his plate and lighted a cigar. "That, I think, should surprise you. You will ask, also, why I do not place my information at the service of the police. There is a reason for that--a reason which I cannot explain to you now, but which will be clear to you when, and if, you run the gang to earth. The Alpha Triangle is an organisation which came into existence originally for the purposes of revenge--the purpose for which it was organised by a genius who, I sometimes think, is mad. You have, of course, been interested in the murder--it was murder, by the way--of Joubert, a few months ago. That was the first crime of the Triangle, and yet I offer for your contemplation the paradox that until five minutes before the murder there was no Alpha Triangle."

Storm sat without comment, although he was literally amazed at the confession he had just heard. Lord Hannassay, whose eyes throughout had been fixed vacantly on the opposite wall, after the fashion of a child repeating a lesson, looked at him suddenly and surprised that look of consternation.

"Exactly--I am deliberately admitting that I am, in a sense, an accessory," he said with a smile. "I must ask you to accept the extraordinary situation, the cause of which will be apparent to you at the successful conclusion of your labours. The Alpha Triangle, then," he went on, "from being a purely revengeful society, became an acquisitively criminal one. I ask you to take my word on that score, for although the Triangle has committed no acquisitive crimes up to date, I have every reason to believe that it will make up for the deficiency in the future. This transition, already an accomplished fact--in the spirit, if not in the deed--must have already occurred to you as a probability. What, indeed, could be more natural than that such an organisation, having established a powerful and unscrupulous society for taking its vengeances, should visualise the possibilities for material gain latent in such a society? The power is there--a power, Captain Arden, which, if you knew its magnitude and the utter, cold, superhuman inflexibility of the man who controls it, might make even you, in spite of your reputation for physical prowess and indomitable courage, turn back from the task you seem so eager to undertake."

For all the precise, calculated levelness of Lord Hannassay's voice, there was an earnestness behind his pedantic sentences that pricked the small hairs on the nape of Storm's neck like a chill wind. And yet this was a purely reflex sensation, for Storm smiled lightly and flicked the ash from his cigarette with leisured care.

"I'll take the risk," he drawled.

Lord Hannassay nodded slowly.

"I thought you would," he said. "You're the sort that would."

"And that's not what they call 'sand,' either," said Storm, and his mocking smile flitted elusively across his lips. "I'll give it you, Lord Hannassay, straight, that I'd rather tackle anything else under the sun than this Triangle business. And I could throw in my hand--I'm not a detective, and I'm not even in Special Branch regularly. I stay on simply because it's a challenge. I've got some sort of a reputation among disreputable people--_Storm won't be beat till he's buried, and maybe not then_, they'll tell you. And they've got it all wrong! It's pride--arrogance--conceit--anything you care to call it. But all it stews down to is just that I'm too bucked with myself--it'd break my heart to have to admit I was beaten! I'd sooner go down fighting, because if I'm beaten that way I'll never have to admit it."

He spoke without a trace of affectation, and yet it was an analysis he had never made to anyone in his life before. Later, Lord Hannassay knew the reason for that frankness, yet even at the time Storm's simple directness appealed to him.

The peer rose and held out his hand.

"I call that 'sand,'" he said quietly. "Captain Arden, you have my very best wishes. I'm--scared of that Triangle. It's got me jumpy--that's honest." He had relapsed into his old jerky style. "It's bigger than I ever dreamed such a thing could be. Queer thing: sometimes I don't care, sometimes I wish I could speak. Probably you'll be killed; sometimes I'm sorry, sometimes it doesn't seem to matter. Yet I like you extraordinarily. Look an easy man to frighten?"

Storm viewed the splendid physique, seemingly unimpaired by age, and his glance wandered to the masterful poise of the big head on the broad shoulders. He smiled as he shook his head.

"I'm afraid," said Lord Hannassay with a grim matter-of-factness that was more startling than any emotional outburst.

"Is that serious?" Storm asked incredulously, and Hannassay nodded.

"Same as you--I'd like to be out of it. Sooner or later, I think, I'll have to pay for my knowledge of it. And yet, if I placed that knowledge at your disposal, even on your assurance that it would go no further, I should be little better off. The Triangle is supremely callous--you understand that, Captain Arden? A human life--half a dozen, if you like--_that_!"

He snapped his fingers contemptuously. Storm concentrated on blowing three smoke rings interlinked with accurate symmetry.

"Who is Bulsaid?" he asked carelessly.

He had expected to create a sensation, and in this he was not disappointed. Hannassay froze into a rock-like immobility. His pale blue eyes were like chips of ice, brittle and glistening.

"Bulsaid," he whispered.

"Bulsaid--the man who was supplanted by Joe Blaythwayt at school, whose mean little soul conceived even at that age an undying hatred of those who passed him in the race. Bulsaid, the man whom Sir John Marker beat at the Clayston bye-election in March, 1897. Bulsaid, the scientist whose seriousness and anarchical views caused him to be ragged rather unmercifully at Oxford, particularly by a man named James Mattock--a man of good family but with too much money, a popular, noisy, carefree youngster whom Bulsaid came to add to the list of enemies his warped mind never forgot. Bulsaid, the man who has you, Lord Hannassay, in his clutches, and who will perhaps never let you go. Bulsaid, the brilliant scholar, the fanatic, the unforgiving hater, the embittered, half-mad genius--Hugo Arden Bulsaid, my father!"

The Under Secretary said nothing, but the ramrod set of his giant frame was now only superficial, for Storm saw that the whole man was vibrant with tiny tremors. Every line on that stern, dominant face was graven deeper and sterner, and little chips of hot steel glinted behind the icy blue eyes.

"Hugo Arden Bulsaid," said Storm slowly, "the man who made Oscar Raegenssen, and who will break him; the man who'll kill me one day, if I don't kill him!"

"So you know," breathed Hannassay. "And I needn't have been so secretive about my knowledge."

He placed his thin cigar between his white teeth and walked across to the window, whence he could look out on the green beauty of Hyde Park dappled with the golden glory of the morning sun.

"Yes.... I know," said Storm after a silence, and the peer turned.

"Captain Arden," he said, "do you hate your father?"

Storm shook his head.

"No--it's just the luck of the game." He paused. "But you hate him."

"I hate him, I think, more than I had ever believed it was possible to hate a man," said Hannassay with a cold gentleness that was like the caress of vitriol. "I hate him from the ultimate depths of my soul. I would kill him without compunction and without fear this day ... but for one thing."

Storm pitched the stump of his cigarette into a flowerpot and buttoned his coat. In those trivial actions he dispelled the tense gloom of the atmosphere as the dawning sunshine breaks up the miasma of a swamp--it was a quality born of his clean, fresh wholesomeness.

"I must be going," he said cheerily. "Hope you have a good holiday."

Lord Hannassay did not ring for the butler, but himself escorted his guest to the door and opened it. He held out his hand and took Kit Arden's in a firm grip.

"_Au revoir_," said Storm, but Hannassay's head made a slight, half-amused negative movement.

"_Adieu_," he said. "A premonition, Captain Arden.... We shall never meet again.... Good-bye!"

Storm drove back to New Scotland Yard, and found the indefatigable Teal waiting for him. That stout detective was working his jaws rhythmically, and a folded copy of the morning paper was propped up on Storm's table before him, while a litter of papers and printed forms of all colours were spread across the blotter.

"There's a few notes you asked for," he remarked. "I've been looking through them."

He rose ponderously, and Storm took his place at the desk.

"I can see somebody's been at them," said Storm gently, and proceeded to attempt to restore order. "Those files of the _Record_ arrived yet?"

"They're at the bottom."

Storm swept the chaos to one side and opened the package which lay beneath. Then he smoothed out the two newspapers he found and began to skim methodically through the pages. It was some minutes before he found the passage he had expected to find, and then the form of it was entirely unsuspected. It consisted of the book reviews, and most of the space was occupied by criticisms of a certain work.

"You read this, Teal," he observed after a while, "and then tell Uncle Joe to give up literature as a career. He's no idea what budding authors have to put up with!"

The commentary was one of the most scathing Storm had ever read. At the head of it was the title _Devolution_, by Hugo Bulsaid; and, a little lower down, appeared the name of the reviewer--signed, as he had anticipated, John Cardan. There was one paragraph:

We are, frankly, amazed that a firm of such standing as Messrs. Barry and Stokes should have suffered such a fit of judicial aberration as to place on the market a work of such incredible worthlessness. We are equally astounded that a man of such scientific prestige as Mr. Bulsaid should have wasted his time in preparing it.

The article went on to discuss the worthlessness of the book in detail, and, judging by the quotations from it with which the remarks were interlarded, it seemed that there was some excuse for the reviewer's violence.

"Anyone but Bulsaid would have started a libel action," Storm murmured.

The tirade concluded with these words:

There is, we know, a great freedom allowed to the printed word, but this freedom was originated that social problems might be clearly and adequately discussed, and that reforms, where necessary, might be suggested without fear. It was not granted in order that such works as "Devolution" might be published. "Devolution" is not only a degrading book; it is a revolting book. The subject is unclean, the theme might have been adopted from the ravings of a lunatic, the treatment is of a coarseness unrelieved by the faintest sparkle of wit or logic, and to the mentality of the author can only be applied the adjective "septic." The only way in which one can regard this work is as a joke--and then the joke is in such poisonous taste that, one hopes, it would scarcely be tolerated in a Wapping taproom.

Storm passed the sheet over to Teal, and the stolid detective read it dispassionately.

"I hope you never read _Devolution_," Kit said when Teal had finished.

"I was a respectably married man by that time," said Mr. Teal virtuously. "And, anyway, what sort of jokes don't they tolerate in Wapping taprooms? I've never been into one--fat men didn't ought to drink."

"I seem to have heard that homily before," remarked Storm. "Anyway, not many people did read it--it was withdrawn shortly after that review. Here's the record."

He glanced through the second paper and finally folded it down at a certain paragraph and passed it across the desk.

"And yet it was all hot air," he said. "I've made inquiries, and as far as anyone can ascertain, Bulsaid led an impeccably moral life both before and after he married. I think that book marks the beginning of his definite insanity. Later, his madness turned into another channel, and consequently became far less obvious."

He collected the scattered documents which he had pushed aside, and began to run through them, classifying them as he did so, and discarding those which did not bear directly on his investigation. Then he drew a clean sheet of paper towards him and made some notes, and when he had finished he called Teal over to study the result.

"I know all about Bulsaid," he said, speaking slowly and quietly, as was his fashion when he was outlining his thoughts aloud. "But Bulsaid isn't the Triangle by any means! There are men in the Triangle who've been brought in to serve the ends of the Triangle, but who've become its masters. Not openly--that's not what I mean. But work's got to be found for them, and money's got to be found for them, or else they'll turn on their leader. Bulsaid started the Triangle, and now Bulsaid's the unconfessed slave of the men he leads."

It was a curious thing that, although it was Teal, acting on the suggestion of Joe Blaythwayt, who had revealed to Storm the identity of his father, the relationship had never since then been mentioned between them.

"Here's the list," said Storm, indicating the notes he had made, "of the crook emigrants into this country, as supplied to us by the American, French, and German police. I'll bracket them off: Con men"---he ticked one group with his pencil--"yeggs ... whizzers ... knockers-off ... blackmailers ... dope merchants ... jewel thieves ... and so forth and so on. All the usual bunch who come over in the season--and the numbers are about average. But look at these, who generally stay at home: eleven killers from Germany; sixteen ditto from Paris, Toulon and Marseilles; twenty-seven synthetic American gunmen. That makes fifty-four criminals who value the life of a man at approximately two cents---all in, or 'believed to be in,' London. Tell me why, Teal! Here's the report of the Chief of the _Sûreté: 'Sans doute, quelqu'un a causé...._' Sorry, you don't talk the lingo, do you?

"Undoubtedly, someone has been talking of the opportunities which presents violent crime in England. We have been able to trace some of the movements of this unknown, and we are convinced that his words have induced numbers of our criminals to quit our shores.

That's a literal translation. In England, old Lafleuve means that some coot's been touting for thugs!" He turned over other papers. "Much the same from Germany. New York says:

"Knowing the rarity of violent crime in England, and the efficiency of the police in suppressing such as exists, we beg to suggest that you search for an organisation which contemplates an attack on London which might easily have disastrous consequences by reason of its very unexpectedness. Our information leads us to suspect the existence of some such organisation, since there is abundant evidence of the persuasive suggestions of some agent, whom we have been unable to trace and identify, and since it is unlikely that men such as those we name on the enclosed list would leave in a body without a definite plan in mind.

Teal, who said respectability was dull?"

"I'll put through an all-station call for these men--you've got the descriptions," said Teal conventionally.

Storm lighted a cigarette with a grace which he contrived to make inexpressibly cynical.

"Put through all the calls you like," he said languidly. "I'll bet you ten thousand bucks to half a secondhand Limberger you don't get more than six of 'em that way! Personally, I'm going to commit two felonies in the course of the next forty-eight hours, and I'll guarantee to find out more about the Triangle that way than you will in forty-eight years with the help of the _Police News_ and the _Weekly List_ and the rest of the bunch, and the whole dogstrung C.I.D. into the bargain!"

He cast around for an excuse to ring up Susan, and, finding none, called her number and hoped that the Lord would provide.

"Yes, of course I'm all right," he said in answer to her first question, and felt a pleasant tingle at the thought that this should have been her initial interest. "One reason I rung up was to find out if you'd decided to accept Terry's invitation to stay with them till Hannassay's back. I wish you would."

In the new spirit of selfishness that had come upon him in the past few days, this was an inquiry of minor importance; and yet, having made it, he was seriously concerned about the reply he would receive.

"I have accepted it," she told him, and he was relieved.

"I'd like you to move in to-day," he said. "I'm sorry if that rushes you, but you've got to realise that there is a certain amount of danger, and if you're killed or anything, I shall get it in the neck. I'll give Terry a ring, and he'll come round and fix everything for you. He loves work," added Storm mendaciously.

"I suppose it can be managed," she said, for in spite of his flippancy she recognised his determination, and knew of old the futility of opposing him. Also, when Storm gave orders he had an uncanny knack of being always right.

"Do we lunch with Uncle Joe?" he teased her.

"I shall probably lunch with Mr. Mannering," she mocked him back. "No, really, I'm sorry you're in such a hurry for me to move. I wanted to go to Moraine's and see the jewels."

"What jewels?"

"Haven't you seen the papers?"

"Haven't had time yet, I usually breakfast in pyjamas, if that personal detail interests you. Getting up so early to go out to breakfast spoilt my interest in the latest horrors other people have been suffering! I'll get hold of Terry now--and I'll be round with him. That boy wants watching!"

He hung up the receiver and took the paper from Teal's hand. The detective, with a perspicacity which indicated that he had not turned a politely deaf ear to the telephone conversation, had already found the place and folded the sheet so as to display it. It was an announcement that the final instalment of the Russian Crown jewels were to be sold by auction at Moraine's on the morrow, and would be on view from ten to four on this particular day, and for one day only. The regalia had already been broken up, and the stones alone, valued at something like four hundred thousand pounds, would be sold.

"That's a lot of money," murmured Storm thoughtfully. "Teal, get on the 'phone and find out how many men are watching Moraine's."

Mr. Teal obeyed heavily, and in a few moments he had the required information. He cupped one hand over the mouthpiece of the telephone and imparted the facts without interest.

"Eight?" repeated Storm. "That's a hell of a lot--I don't think! Tell 'em to turn out the reserves. I want fifty men at Moraine's in thirty minutes, and they've got to be armed!"