THE intelligence that had inspired Ben to change clothing with Ted Flitt ceased to exist at the sight of Mahdi. Of all things that had terrified Ben during the past hours it was the Indian who had terrified him most, and the Oriental’s appearance now on the basement stairs utterly extinguished the sailor’s brain. But fortunately a precisely opposite effect was produced on Nadine. On her the Indian acted as a sudden stimulant, whipping her finally out of her numbness and supplying her with the wit and vitality to carry Ben’s intelligence on. Thus, she answered Mahdi’s dawning question before it was asked.
‘Yes, I’m beaten, Mahdi,’ she murmured. ‘My jailer was cleverer than I took him to be.’
‘So?’ said Mahdi. ‘Then how do you come to be outside the cellar?’
‘I’d already got outside the cellar in my attempt to escape.’
‘I see.’ Mahdi’s voice was thoughtful, and his eyes now turned towards Ben, who luckily bathed in shadows. ‘But I might also ask how the clever jailer permitted your attempt to escape?’
Again Nadine stepped into the breach. She was giving Ben time to recover.
‘There may have been some one who nearly proved even cleverer than the jailer,’ she exclaimed.
Something in her tone, or a quick thought inspired by her words, caused the Indian to bring his eyes swiftly back to the girl’s face. Ben, struggling hard to find his lost brain, felt as though a scorching heat had been blessedly removed from his forehead.
‘You refer to a tramp?’ inquired Mahdi.
Nadine shrugged her shoulders. ‘Perhaps,’ she said.
‘Where is he?’ demanded Mahdi.
And then Ben found his brain. It was half-way to the moon. A moment later and it would have been all the way to the moon, and Ben would have followed it, but he was just in time to catch hold of it with one hand, and to jerk the other hand towards the cellar door. Mentally speaking, Ben was in several pieces and several places.
The Indian looked at the hand that was jerking towards the cellar door. Then he looked at the cellar door.
‘In there, Mr Flitt?’
Ben nodded. He had been speechless through terror before. Now he was speechless through triumph. He was duping the Indian! Actually duping him…
Mahdi moved a step forward. Then he paused, and once more Ben felt his forehead scorching and his brain moving moonwards.
‘What will the clever jailer do if his prisoner makes a dash?’ he inquired.
For a peripatetic brain Ben’s was not doing so badly. From a very long way off it directed Ben to produce his pistol and to point it towards the girl’s breast. And then it asked him, suddenly close, why he had not produced the pistol before, why he had concealed it behind his back, and why he was not now pointing it at the Indian instead of the girl. A quick swing round—bing!—pop him off!…Yes, why not? Quick swing round—bing!—pop him off! And then a bunk up the stairs, and across to the front door…What was the order?…Swing round—bing—pop—bunk…Swing round—bing—
The Indian was moving forward again. ‘Where’s ’e goin’?’ thought Ben. He couldn’t make sure whether the Indian were moving towards him or the cellar, or exactly midway between the two. It must be the cellar! He had called him ‘Mr Flitt!’ Well, that proved it, didn’t, it? Swing round—bing—pop—no! ’Arf a mo’! Wait till he got by! That was the ticket. Then, when he had got by, and was at the cellar door, with his back turned…swing round bing—pop—bunk…
It is probable that if some statician or surveyor of foreheads could have measured the perspiration on Ben’s brow at this moment, the density would have constituted a record; although the record was destined to be broken twice more on the same spot before Ben’s brow returned to its normal texture. As the Indian drew nearer and nearer, the brain behind the brow separated and became a thousand brains, each shrieking, each thinking differently, each swimming about impotently and blubbing for its mother. The Indian grew large and small, as seemed his habit at poignant moments. The whites of his eyes revolved like Catherine wheels. Time revolved with him. Was it yesterday, or today, or tomorrow? And through it all, like the throb of an engine or the beat of a pulse, ran the ceaseless, meaningless rhythm: round—bing—pop—bunk…round—bing—pop—bunk…
Then reality came hurtling back. The Indian had passed, and was at the cellar door. At the cellar door! Beyond Ben! With his back to Ben! At the mercy of Ben!
With violently trembling fingers—‘yer see, yer ain’t quite yerself,’ Ben reflected in one of those timeless instants not recorded by clocks—the dazed fellow began to swing the pistol round towards the Indian. The Indian turned the cellar key. The pistol continued to swing round. The Indian began to push the cellar door open. The pistol swung round more. It was a slow-motion swing. Now the muzzle pointed directly towards the Indian’s back…
And then a hand closed over Ben’s. If it had closed over suddenly, Mahdi would have been dead the next instant; and Ben would have qualified at the same moment for a lunatic asylum. But it closed over quietly, softly, yet with a strange firmness. Something cool, something infinitely steadying, pervaded Ben. For the first time he experienced the full executive quality of the girl he was humbly trying to serve…
Now the cellar door was wide open, and Mahdi was peering in. A bound and gagged figure peered back at him from a dark corner. And, all at once, Ben realized—or thought he realised—the reason why he had not been allowed to shoot Mahdi in the back. When Mahdi stepped into the cellar to investigate that bound and gagged figure more closely, it would be simple to spring forward and close the door behind him. And to relock it! And to solve the Indian problem!
But Indian problems are not so easily solved. For some reason of his own, Mahdi did not step into the cellar to make a closer investigation of the bound and gagged figure. Satisfied, with what he saw, he suddenly stepped back into the passage and relocked the door himself. Then he put the key into his pocket, and turned once more towards the two who were watching him.
To Ben’s relief, and also amazement, he found that his pistol was now pointing towards Nadine again. He did not remember returning it to this position…
‘Listen, Mr Flitt,’ came the Indian’s quiet voice. It would have sounded pleasanter if the ‘Mr’ had been omitted. The ‘Mr’ sounded contemptuous and ironical—but then, a fellow like Mahdi would surely feel contempt for a fellow like Flitt? ‘You are, like everybody else in this house, a fool, but you have performed one service which has been fruitlessly attempted by all the other fools. You have caught the biggest fool of all.’
Ben’s brain began to spin again. He felt his identity slipping from him. He couldn’t be quite sure whether he was in the cellar or outside it. Meanwhile, the voice of Mahdi went on:
‘Yes, the man locked in there is the most perfect fool I have ever met. He has no brains. He has no strength. He has no motive. Yet—like your fool at Poker—he has beaten us at every turn, and might have continued to beat us had he still been at large. Yes, I admit that, Nadine. It is no disgrace. A drunken fellow across a track may derail the millionaire express. A fragment of grit may upset a solar system. Without any qualification—without any purpose’—he paused for a moment, in subconscious response to a quickly suppressed question in Nadine’s eyes—‘this fellow has hung on like a barnacle! He has even killed a man, Nadine. Killed a man with four times his strength—who was sent to kill him.’
Nadine stood very still. Ben lowered his eyes. He couldn’t keep up with this.
‘Without a purpose,’ repeated the Indian, suddenly musing. ‘Without a purpose? The instinct of self-preservation is strong, and that, of course, is a purpose of sorts. But self-preservation alone, should have dismissed him the first time I saw him…Yes—I wonder!’
His eyes searched Nadine’s ruthlessly. Without removing them, he now addressed Ben again. He had an uncanny trick of pitching his voice in any direction he desired.
‘This lady, Mr Flitt, has not been without a purpose. She, too, has menaced us. But before I have done with her I shall find out what her purpose is. Yes, Mr Flitt, I shall make that my special object. And, since the cellar now has a new occupant, I shall take her to another prison, where the voice of one who controls us all, Mr Flitt, will question her in his own particular fashion.’
‘One who controls you all?’ asked Nadine quietly. ‘Who is that?’
‘You will learn. You shall be dealt with by no less, Nadine! I hope you will see it as an honour when I convey you from here into his presence.’
‘You’re going to take me to him, then?’
‘I have said so.’
‘When?’
‘There will be no delay. Be sure, the meeting is mutually required. Meanwhile, Mr Flitt, you will continue to carry out instructions here, to ensure that another required meeting will also take place—’
‘What other meeting?’ demanded Nadine.
‘Why should I tell you?’ smiled Mahdi.
‘Well, I don’t want to be told,’ retorted Nadine. ‘It is a proof, after all, that you still fear me, Mahdi.’
The smile on Mahdi’s face remained.
‘A simple trick to draw, the information,’ he said. ‘But the child shall be satisfied. For perhaps she must be convinced that she is no longer to be feared? Only as a loved one could she bite. Oh, yes, Nadine, I too have been a fool. But the truly wise admit their folly—and rend the causes of it…What is the matter, Mr Flitt? Do not alter the position of your revolver. Pray keep her covered!…’
‘And is all this chatter of yours another simple trick,’ asked Nadine, a touch of deliberate scorn in her voice, ‘to divert us from the information you were going to give me?’
‘No. You shall have the information. It will not help you. A long box will leave this house tonight. The long box will be conveyed to the place where, also, I am going to convey you, Nadine, and the long box will contain the person with whom this further meeting is desired. You may yourself meet this person,’ he added reflectively. ‘You may be able to help in the explaining of him—should he unwisely refuse to do the explaining himself?’ He paused. ‘And now, I think, it is time for us to go. Unless, perhaps, you want any more information?’
‘You might tell me one more thing,’ said Nadine, ‘if you’re in the mood.’
‘Ask quickly!’
‘What is going to happen to—the biggest fool of all?’
She glanced towards the cellar. She was asking the question for Ben’s guidance, and he hung on to the answer.
‘The biggest fool of all,’ repeated Mahdi, softly. ‘So—you think of him? Well, Nadine, so do I. Believe me, he shall not be forgotten. When the biggest fool and I next meet, he will learn the price of folly!’
He held up his hand for silence. The hall above had become alive with faint sounds. Footsteps crossing the floor—low, uneasy voices—the front door closing…
‘And there go two more fools,’ murmured Mahdi grimly.
‘Yes and what will their folly cost?’ inquired Nadine, with contempt.
‘Shall we say, fifteen thousand pounds—to start with?’ replied Mahdi. ‘You see how little I fear her, Mr Flitt. I tell, her everything! Now, come!’
He seized her wrist with sudden ferocity, but his eyes still smiled. The movement, coupled with its cynical denial of significance, chilled Ben. Beneath his smooth, exterior, the man was a savage, a bursting volcano! And a single bullet could extinguish him!
Again, Ben’s fingers itched almost uncontrollably. Why did he hesitate? Why?
And then, in a sudden illuminating flash, he knew. The girl was willing the reason into him. If Mahdi were dead, how would she learn the whereabouts of the one who controlled them all?