CHAPTER VII

THE LAST MEETING

In Sir Robert Llwellyn's flat in Bond Street the electric bell suddenly rang, a shrill tinkle in the silence.

Schuabe, who sat by the window, looked up with a strained, white face.

Avoiding his glance, Llwellyn rose and went out into the passage. The latch of the door clicked, there was a murmur of voices, and Llwellyn returned, following a third person.

Schuabe gave a scarcely perceptible shudder as this man entered.

The man was a thick-set person of medium height, clean shaven. He was dressed in a frock-coat and carried a silk hat, neither new nor smart, yet not seedy nor showing any evidences of poverty. The man's face was one to inspire a sensitive or alert person with a sudden disgust and terror for which a name can hardly be found. It was an utterly abominable and black soul that looked out of the still rather bilious eyes.

The eyes were much older than the rest of the face. They were full of a cold and deliberate cruelty and, worse even than this, such a hideous _knowledge_ of unmentionable crime was there! The lips made one thin, wicked curve which hardly varied in direction, for this man could not smile.

He belonged to a certain horrible gang who infest the West End of London, bringing terror and ruin to all they meet. These people haunt the bars and music halls of the "pleasure" part of London.

It were better for a man that he had never been born--a thousand times better--than that he should go among these men. Black shame and horrors worse than death they bring with both hands to the bitter fools who lightly meet them unknowing what they are.

Constantine Schuabe, in the moment when he saw this man--knowing well who and what he was--knew the bitterest moment of his life.

Vast criminal that he was himself, mighty in his evil brain, ... he was pure; certain infamies were not his.... He spat into his handkerchief with an awful physical disgust.

"This is my friend, Nunc Wallace," said Llwellyn, pale and trembling.

The man looked keenly at his two hosts. Then he sat down in a chair.

"Well, gentlemen," he said in correct English, but with a curious lack of _timbre_, of life and feeling in his voice--he spoke as one might think a corpse would speak--"I'm sorry to say that it's all off. It simply can't be done at any price. Even I myself, 'King of the boys' as they call me, confess myself beaten."

Schuabe gave a sudden start, almost of relief it seemed.

Llwellyn cleared his throat once or twice before he could speak. When the words came at length there was a nauseous eagerness in them.

"Why not, Wallace? Surely _you_ and your friends--it must be something very hard that you can't manage."

The words jostled each other in their rapid utterance.

"Give me a drink, Sir Robert, and I'll tell you the reason," said the man.

Then, with an inexpressible assumption of confidence and an identity of interests, which galled and stung the two wretched men till they could hardly bear the torture of it, he began:

"You see, it's like this; we can generally calculate on 'putting a man through it' if he's anything to do with racing on the Turf. I've seen a man's face kicked liver colour, and no one knew who did it. But this parson was a more difficult thing altogether. Then it has been very much complicated by the fact of his friend coming back.

"The idea was to get into the chambers on the evening of this Spence's arrival and put them both through it. In fact, we'd arranged everything fairly well. But two nights ago, as I was in the American bar, at the Horsecloth, a man touched me on the arm. It was Detective Inspector Melton. He knows everything. 'Nunc,' he said, 'sit down at one of these little tables and have a drink. I want to say a few words to you.' Well, of course I had to. He knows every one of the boys.

"'Now, look here,' he said straight out. 'Some of your crowd have been watching the Rev. Basil Gortre of Lincoln's Inn; also, you've had a man at Charing Cross waiting for the continental express. Now, I've nothing against you _yet_, but I'll just tell you this. The people behind you aren't any guarantee for you. It's not as you think. This is a big thing. I'll tell you something more. This Mr. Gortre and this Mr. Spence you're waiting for are guarded night and day by order of the Home Secretary. It's an international affair. You can no more touch them than you can touch the Prince of Wales. Is that clear? If it's not, then you'll come with me at once on suspicion. I can put my finger on Bunny Watson'--he's my organising pal, gentlemen--'inside of an hour.'"

He stopped at last, taking another drink with a shaking hand, watching the other two with horribly observing eyes.

His cleverness had at once shown him that he had stumbled into something far more dangerous than any ordinary incident of his horrid trade. A million pounds would not have made him touch the "business" now. He had come to say this to his employers now.

The unhappy men became aware that the man was looking at them both with a new expression. There was wonder in his cold eyes now, and a sort of fear also. When Llwellyn had first sought him with black and infamous proposals, there had been none of this. _That_ had seemed ordinary enough to him, the reason he did not inquire or seek to know.

But now there was inquiry in his eyes.

Both Schuabe and Llwellyn saw it, knew the cause, and shuddered.

There was a tense silence, and then the creature spoke again. There was a loathsome confidential note in his voice.

"Now, gentlemen," he said, "you've already paid me well for any little kindness I may have been able to try to do for you. I suppose, now that the little job is 'off,' I shall not get the rest of the sum agreed upon?"

Schuabe, without speaking, made a sign to Llwellyn. The big man got up, went to a little nest of mahogany drawers which stood on his writing-table, and opening one of them, took from it a bundle of notes.

He gave them to the assassin. "There, Nunc," he said; "no doubt you've done all you could. You won't find us ungrateful. But I want to ask you a few questions."

The man took the notes, counted them deliberately, and then looked up with a gleam of satisfied greed passing over his face--the gleam of a pale sunbeam in hell.

"Ask anything you like, sir," he said; "I'll give you any help I can."

Already there was a ring almost of patronage in his voice. The word "help" was slightly emphasised.

"This inspector, who is he exactly? I mean, is he an important person?"

"He is the man who has charge of all the big things. He goes abroad when one of the big city men bunk to South America. He generally works straight from the Home Office; he's the Government man. To tell the truth, I was surprised to meet _him_ in the Horsecloth. One of the others generally goes there. When _he_ began to talk, I knew that there was something important, more than usual."

"He definitely said that he knew your--backers?"

"Yes, he did; and what's more, gentlemen, he seemed to know too much altogether about the business. I don't pretend to understand it. _I_ don't know why a young parson and a press reporter are being looked after by Government as if they were continental sovereigns and the Anarchists were trying to get at them--no more than I know why two such gentlemen as you are wanting two smaller men put through it. But all's well that ends well. _I'm_ satisfied enough, and I'm extremely glad that I got this notice in time to stop it off. But whatever you do, gentlemen, give up any idea of doing those two any harm. You couldn't do it--couldn't get near them. Give it up, gentlemen. Somehow or other, they know all about it. Be careful. Now I'm off. Good-day, gentlemen. Look after yourselves. I fear there is trouble brewing somewhere, though it won't come through _me_. They can't _prove_ anything on our side."

He went slowly out of the room, back into the darkness of the pit whence he came, to the dark which mercifully hides such as he from the gaze of dwellers under the heavens.

Only the police of London know all about these men, and their imaginations are not, perhaps, strong enough to let the horror of contact remain with them.

When he had gone, Llwellyn sank heavily into a chair. He covered his face with his hands and moaned.

"Oh, fool that I was to try anything of the sort!" hissed Schuabe. "I might have known!"

"What is the state of things, really, do you suppose?" said Llwellyn.

"Imminent with doom for us!" Schuabe answered in a deep and melancholy voice. "It is all clear to me now. Your woman was set on to you by these men from the first. They are clever men. Michael Manichoe is behind them all. She got the story. Spence has been sent to verify it. He has got everything from Ionides. The Government has been told. These things have been going on during the last few hours. Spence has cabled something of his news, perhaps not all. He will be back to-day, this afternoon. He will have left Paris by now, and almost be nearing Amiens. In that train, Llwellyn, lies our death-warrant. Nothing can stop it. They will send the news all over the world to-night. It will be announced in London by dinner-time, probably."

Llwellyn groaned again. In this supreme hour of torture the sensualist was nearer collapse than the ascetic. His life told heavily. He looked up. His face was green-grey save where, here and there, his fingers had pressed into, and left red marks upon, the cheeks, which had lost their firmness and begun to be pendulous and flabby.

"What do you think must be the end?" he said.

"The end is here," said Schuabe. "What matters the form or manner of it? They may bring in a bill and hang us, they will certainly give us penal servitude for life, but probably we shall be torn in pieces by the mob. There is only one thing left."

He made an expressive gesture. Llwellyn shuddered.

"All is not necessarily at an end," he said. "I shall make a last effort to get away. I have still got the clergyman's clothes I wore when I went to Jerusalem. There will be time to get out of London before this evening."

"All over the continent and America you would be known. There is no getting away nowadays. As for me, I shall go down to my place in Manchester by the mid-day train. There is just time to catch it. And there I shall die before they can come to me."

He got up and strode away out of the flat with a set, stern face. Never a passing look did he give to the man he had enriched and damned for ever. Never a gesture of farewell.

Already he was as one in the grave. Llwellyn, left to himself in the silent, richly furnished flat, fell into hysterical sobbing.

His big body shook with the vehemence of his unnatural terror. His moans and cries were utterly without dignity or pathos. He was filled with the immense self-pity of the sensualist.

It is the added torture which comes to the evil-liver.

In the hour of blackness, every moment of physical gratification or sin adds its weight to the terrible burden which must be borne.

This man felt that he was lost. Perhaps all hope was not quite dead. He called on all his courage to make a last attempt at escape.

He must leave this place at once. He would go first to his house in Upper Berkeley Street, Lady Llwellyn's house! His wife.

Something strange and long forgotten moved within him at that word. What might not his life have been by her side, a life lived in open honour! What had he done with it all? His great name, his fame, were built up slowly by his long and brilliant work. Yet all the time that fair edifice was being undermined by secret workers. The lusts of the flesh were deep below the structure, their hammers were always slowly tapping--and now it was all over.

He drove up to his own door, unlocked it, and went up the stairs to his own rooms.

Though he had not been near them for weeks, he saw--with how keen a pang of regret--that they were swept and tidy, ready for his coming at any time.

He rang the bell.

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