"_Herein_!" cried a guttural German voice.
The room into which they entered would have been ent.i.tled to a place in any museum for showing the mode of life of the twentieth-century Germans. With its stuffy red rep curtains, its big green majolica stove, its heavy mahogany furniture, its oleographs of Bismarck, Roon, and Moltke, it might have been lifted bodily from a bourgeois house in the Fatherland.
A man was sitting at a mahogany roll-top desk as they entered. The air in the room was thick with the fumes of the cheap Dutch cigar he was smoking. He was a st.u.r.dily built fellow with blond hair shaven so close to the skull that at a distance he seemed to be bald.
At the sound of their entrance, he rose and faced them. When he stood erect the st.u.r.diness of his build became accentuated, and they saw he was a man of medium height, but so muscular that he looked much shorter.
A pair of large tortoise-sh.e.l.l spectacles straddled a big beak-like nose, and he wore a heavyish blond moustache with its points trained upwards and outwards rather after the fashion made famous in the Fatherland by William Hohenzollern. In his ill-cut suit of cheap-looking blue serge, which he wore with a pea-green tie, Robin thought he looked altogether a typical specimen of the German of the non-commissioned officer cla.s.s.
"You ask for me?" he said in deep guttural accents, looking at Robin; "I am Herr Schulz!"
The German"s manner was cold and formal and Robin felt a little dashed.
"My name is Greve," he began rather hurriedly. "I understand you received a visit to-day from a young English lady, a Miss Trevert ..."
The German let his eyes travel slowly from Robin to the doctor and back again. He did not offer them a chair and all three remained standing.
"Ye-es, and what if I did?"
Robin felt his temper rising.
"You wrote a note to Miss Trevert at her hotel warning her that she was in danger. I want to know why you warned her. What led you to suppose that she was threatened?"
Herr Schulz made a little gesture of the hand.
"Wa.s.s I not right to warn her?"
"Indeed, you were," Robin a.s.serted with conviction. "She was spirited away and drugged."
The German started. A frowning pucker appeared just above the bridge of his big spectacles and he raised his head quickly.
"Drugged?" he said.
"Certainly," said Robin. "This gentleman with me is a doctor ... Dr.
Robert Collingwood, of the Red Lion Line. He has examined Miss Trevert and can corroborate my statement."
"By Gad!" exclaimed Herr Schulz--and this time his English was faultless and fluent--"Shut that door behind you, Mr. Greve, and shoot the bolt--that"s it just below the k.n.o.b! Sit down, sit down, and while I mix you a drink, you shall tell me about this!"
CHAPTER XXV
THE READING OF THE RIDDLE
In uttering those words Herr Schulz seemed suddenly to become loose-limbed and easy. His plethoric rigidity of manner vanished, and, though he spoke with a brisk air of authority, there was a jovial ring in his voice which instantly inspired confidence. With the change the illusion supported by his appalling clothes was broken and he looked like a man dressed up for charades.
"Are you--English?" asked Robin in astonishment.
"Only in this room," was the dry reply, "and don"t you or our friend, the doctor, here forget it. You"ll both take whisky? Three fingers will do you good, Mr. Greve, for I see you"ve had a roughish time this morning. Say when!"
He spurted a siphon into three gla.s.ses.
"Before we go any farther," he went on, "perhaps I had better identify myself--to save any further misunderstandings, don"t you know? Do either of you gentlemen happen to know a party called Dulkinghorn? You may have heard of him, Mr. Greve, for I can see you have been in the army ..."
"Not Ernest Dulkinghorn, of the War Office?" asked Robin.
"The identical party!"
"I never met him," said Robin. "But I was at the War Office for a bit before I was demobilized and I heard fellows speak of him.
Counter-espionage, isn"t he?"
"That"s right," nodded Herr Schulz. "You can read his letter to me introducing Miss Trevert."
He handed a sheet of paper to Robin.
DEAR SCHULZ [it ran], Victor Marbran"s push appear to be connected with Hartley Parrish, who has just met his death under suspicious circ.u.mstances.
You will have read about it in the English papers.
Miss Trevert was engaged to H.P. and has a letter from Elias van der Spyck and Company which she found on Parrish"s desk after his death. I should say that the Marbran-Parrish connection would repay investigation.
Yours
E. DULKINGHORN
P.S. The letter is, of course, in conventional code.
P.P.S. Don"t frighten the life out of the Trevert girl, you unsympathetic brute!
Robin read the letter through to the end.
"Then Mary Trevert has this letter from Rotterdam which we have been hunting for!" he cried. "Have you seen it?"
Herr Schulz shook his head.
"Miss Trevert called here this morning," he said, "when I was out. She gave her letter to Frau Wirth, my housekeeper, with her card and address. Frau Wirth was cleaning the plate on the front door and, a moment after Miss Trevert had gone, a fellow appeared and said he was a friend of Miss Trevert who had made a mistake and left the wrong letter.
My housekeeper is well trained and wouldn"t give the letter up. But she made the fatal mistake of telling the fellow exactly what he wanted to know, and that was who the letter was addressed to. "The letter is addressed to Herr Schulz," said this excellent woman, "and if there"s any mistake he will find it out when he opens it." And with that she told him to clear out. Which, having got all he wanted, he was glad enough to do!"
"What was this chap like?" asked Robin.
The big man shrugged his shoulders.
"I can teach my servants discretion," he replied whimsically, "but I can"t teach "em to use their eyes. Frau Wirth could remember nothing about this fellow except that he wasn"t tall and wore a brown overcoat ..."
"Jeekes!" cried Robin, slapping his thigh. "He must have been actually coming away from your place when I met him ..."
"And who," asked the big man, reflectively contemplating the amber fluid in his gla.s.s, "who is Jeekes?"
In reply Robin told him the story of Hartley Parrish"s death, his growing certainty that the millionaire had been murdered, the mysterious letters on slatey-blue paper, and Jeekes"s endeavor to burke the investigations by throwing on Robin the suspicion of having driven Parrish to suicide by threats. He told of his chance meeting with Jeekes in Rotterdam that morning, his adventure at the Villa Bergendal, his finding and rescue of Mary Trevert, and their escape.