CHAPTER XXVII.

THE COMRADES GATHER

“Nanette has gone on somewhere to dance,” said O’Shea.

“I know.” I stared out of the window of the taxi. “I take it that she doesn’t know where _we_ have gone on to?”

“No.”

O’Shea’s reply was little more than a whisper, but it told me that which made me at once glad and sorry. For good or for ill, Nanette was winning.

“Two things are rather worrying me,” O’Shea confessed. “It is obvious enough that Zara is afraid to visit any of the known centres of the S Group, hence the appointment at Peter Pan. He probably received the letter--or ‘Order’--at some post office, under an assumed name. But if he had read it and decoded it before he dropped it in the taxi, where was he at noon to-day?”

“Unable to approach Peter Pan,” I replied promptly, “because we were there, not to mention the man from Scotland Yard who was following the German.”

“Yes,” O’Shea mused. “Zara’s reaction to this check is one of the points I am wondering about. It may prove to be a snag. The second snag----”

But as our taxi had turned into Porchester Terrace and was now pulling up, I did not learn what the second snag might be.

We alighted, and I looked up and down the street. Save for O’Shea’s assurance, there was nothing to show that our movements were covered by the squad from Scotland Yard. Porchester Terrace proclaimed itself empty from end to end, or for as far as I could see.

Number 365A was a prosperous-looking mansion set back beyond a patch of shrubbery and approached through a sort of arcade guarded by handsome double doors. What appeared to be a large room on the first floor was brilliantly lighted, but otherwise the house was in darkness.

“Pull over to the other side of the street,” O’Shea directed the taxi driver, “and wait. We shall not be long.”

“Very good, sir.”

As the man turned his cab:

“Now,” said O’Shea, “we are going over the top! Are you fit?”

“All ready,” said I.

O’Shea pressed the bell button.

In the interval that elapsed between the ringing of the bell and the opening of the door, I conjured up a picture of Nanette dancing with somebody or another somewhere, perpetually glancing abstractedly about the room, as I had seen her do so often, in hope of catching a glimpse of O’Shea.

It was hard to believe that this doorway before which we waited represented a frontier which, once crossed, shut us off from the life of empty gaiety which the name of London conveys to so many; difficult to regard it as the porch of a grim and real underworld, controlled by enemies of established society, remorseless, almost inhuman in their bloodthirsty fanaticism.

A saturnine foreign butler admitted us. We had shed our dinner kit and were wearing tweeds.

“Comrade Zara and Comrade Wilson,” said O’Shea with composure.

The man nodded and stood aside. We entered the arcade, which was bordered by plants in pots, and saw ahead of us some carpeted steps, lighted by a hanging lantern.

As the double doors closed behind us, I experienced one of those indescribable moments compounded of panic and exhilaration. Then somewhere, very dimly, I heard a clock striking midnight. We were going upstairs.

“Comrade Zara and Comrade Wilson.”

I found myself in a large room, very simply furnished in library fashion, and in the presence of six or seven rather unsavoury human specimens, some of whom bowed curtly, and some of whom did not bow at all.

Our Peter Pan acquaintance was present; and a short thick-set man, who had incredibly long arms, and who generally resembled a red baboon, came forward to greet us. He had incomplete teeth, and those that survived badly needed scaling. His accent opened up wide possibilities.

“Greeting, Comrades,” said he. “You are welcome. My name is Schmidt.”

And as he spoke, fixing his piercing glance first upon O’Shea and then upon myself, I recognized beneath that uncouth exterior the primitive, formidable force of the man.

He presented the other comrades, by names which are not to be found in Debrett, and I reflected that impudence is indispensable to success in this sort of game.

It became evident that, from Comrade Schmidt downward, nobody in the room was familiar with the appearance of either Zara or Wilson!

An appalling-looking bearded creature attached itself to O’Shea.

“We are anxious, Comrade,” it said, “to hear your personal account of the state of the work in South Africa.”

“I am not too hopeful,” O’Shea replied gloomily, and glanced aside at me.

“But,” said Schmidt, turning his dreadful little eyes in my direction, “Comrade Wilson brings us news from the United States which will be like new blood in our veins.”

Somehow or another, O’Shea managed to shake off the Missing Link, and to secure a word aside with me.

“Very full bag,” he murmured. “If we make no mistakes, we shall purge England and America of some unsavoury elements. But the second snag which I had foreseen rests on the fact that another steamer from Madeira has reached Southampton since we returned. There is one member of the S Group whom we left behind. He knows us both. He might quite conceivably have been in that steamer! His appearance here would raise the temperature considerably. And----”

He was interrupted. The door of the room was thrown open and the foreign butler entered.

“Comrade Macalister,” he announced.

“The snag to which I referred!” said O’Shea.