Directly his visitor had departed Major Brien walked along the corridor to the room of Sir Leonard Wallace, and reported what had occurred. The Chief of the British Secret Service listened without interruption until the end. Except that he had frowned slightly at the information concerning the anarchist’s escape, he showed no emotion of any sort. In fact, he appeared absolutely unconcerned.
‘It is all very well to blame the actor,’ he observed, ‘but his action should not have been responsible for Pestalozzi’s escape. Since yesterday afternoon, when Carter found him in Soho, he has been continually followed by two, sometimes three, today four men. “He has visited three houses, four restaurants, at which he has stayed for varying periods,”’ he was quoting from a report on his desk, ‘“and slept the night in the Canute Hotel, in Waterloo Road.” That is correct, isn’t it?’ Brien nodded. ‘Well, in that time, the men who trailed him learnt that he was exceedingly jumpy, startled by the least happening out of the ordinary. He was, in short, on the qui vive and ready to bolt at a moment’s notice. That being the case, why were they not more careful?’
Brien moodily took a cigarette from the box on the desk and lit it.
‘It is going to be a devil of a job to pick him up again,’ he remarked, ‘and the king is due next week.’
‘Not so difficult as it may appear, Bill.’ Brien caught the glint in his friend’s eyes, and all doubt or exasperation vanished at once. ‘Send Carter to me if he’s available, will you? If not Maddison will do.’
Warning had been sent to headquarters from the British agent in Vienna that a gang of international anarchists had grown very active in their meetings in that city of late. Certain information which had reached him suggested that they had determined to assassinate the king of a European country about to pay an official visit to Great Britain. Sir Leonard Wallace had hardly received the first report when a second arrived stating that three members of the band of anarchists had left for England – one of them, Pestalozzi, being known to have arrived already. How he had entered the country was a mystery, but there was no doubt of his being there.
Immediately an intensive search had commenced for him, while watch was kept on all ports and aerodromes for the other two. After nearly a month’s heartbreaking disappointment, with scarcely a clue to suggest Pestalozzi’s whereabouts, Carter, of the Secret Service, had traced him to a restaurant in Soho. From that moment he had been under almost constant surveillance until the unfortunate intervention by Gale Preston. Even when he had slept at the Canute Hotel, on the preceding night, a man had actually been in the lounge below, while another had watched the window from the street. It had been ascertained that he had not been staying at the Canute, having merely taken a bed for that night for some reason or other. Now he had been lost again, and the king was due to land in England within a few days. To make matters more serious, nothing had been learnt of the whereabouts of the other two anarchists. Beust, one of the most reliable men in the Secret Service, who had lived in Austria since he was a child, was certain they had left the country with the intention of reaching England. There was no information whatever regarding their movements after they had departed from Vienna. It was because of this that Pestalozzi had been so carefully shadowed. He had visited three dwelling houses in which were living compatriots of his, and taken meals in four different restaurants, as a result of which all the places, and the people who inhabited or frequented them, were now under surveillance.
It was certain that he must be lodged more or less permanently somewhere. He had taken no luggage with him to the Canute Hotel, and had paid in advance for bed and breakfast from a greasy pocketbook packed with banknotes. He was, therefore, not short of money. Sir Leonard Wallace felt certain in his own mind that he had found a retreat with people of his own breed living in a district devoted to foreigners, possibly Soho, and that the other two were with him. The difficulty of finding them was that the Secret Service possessed a description only of Pestalozzi. Beust had even managed, somehow, to obtain a snapshot of the man – it had been in Carter’s possession when he had found and recognised him. He knew nothing about the other two, however, except their names – one was Zanazaryk, a Czechoslovakian, the other, Haeckel, a German – he possessed neither photographs nor description of them, and names were very easily changed.
When Major Brien had left his room, Sir Leonard telephoned through to the Assistant Commissioner of the Special Branch at New Scotland Yard, and suggested simultaneous raids that night on the three dwelling-houses which Pestalozzi had been known to visit. Two were in Kennington, not far from the Oval, the other was close to Vauxhall Station. He did not expect that either the Italian or his companions would be in any, but there was just a possibility that they might, or perhaps information regarding their whereabouts could be discovered. The Assistant Commissioner thought the idea a good one, declared he would make arrangements at once, and submit his plans to Sir Leonard that evening. As Wallace turned from the telephone a knock came at the door. In reply to his invitation there entered a young man who looked every inch an athlete from the top of his dark brown hair to the soles of his feet. His merry, laughing eyes, and altogether good-humoured as well as good-looking face suggested a happy-go-lucky disposition. He was one of the most efficient and certainly one of the most daring members of Sir Leonard’s gallant band of assistants, although the youngest by two or three years. Wallace nodded to him.
‘They’ve lost him, Carter,’ he observed quietly.
‘I’ve just heard about it, sir,’ replied the young man. ‘Shannon, of course, is taking it as all in the day’s work, but I believe he is thoroughly fed up. He blames himself for not telling the SB men to keep parallel with Pestalozzi on the other side of the road.’
‘Of course that should have been done,’ commented Sir Leonard, ‘but it was not, and it is no use crying over spilt milk. It is essential that we get in touch with Pestalozzi again at the earliest possible moment,’ he observed. ‘King Peter arrives in this country next Wednesday. Today is Thursday. There is little over five days, therefore, in which to accomplish work that twenty-three have failed to bring to a successful issue. I am convinced that Zanazaryk and Haeckel are also in the country, and they, as well as Pestalozzi, must be in our hands or rendered impotent by next Tuesday. I am pinning my faith to one little incident connected with your finding of the Italian yesterday.’
‘What is that, sir?’ asked Carter quickly.
‘You reported that after leaving the restaurant at which he lunched he walked to Leicester Square, and there had his boots polished by a shoeblack. That is so, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘You noticed, however, that his boots did not want cleaning, that they were, in fact, already very bright. Furthermore, he remained with the shoeblack longer than it would ordinarily take to clean a pair of dirty boots, and all the time they were engaged in conversation in low voices. In short, Carter, though you took little notice of it at the time, you believed that there was some connection between the two men.’
‘That is true, sir,’ nodded the young man.
‘Well, I believe our opportunity lies in that shoeblack. Go to Leicester Square and, if he is still there, watch him and follow him when he leaves his pitch. Find out as much about him as you can; then report to me. We may be wrong, perhaps my instinct is leading me astray this time, but there is just a chance that he may turn out to be the key to the situation. None of the places which Pestalozzi visited has supplied us with any useful information yet – they will be quietly raided tonight, but I am not anticipating any great result from that. If you find the bootblack hang on to him like grim death. Understand, Carter?’
‘Yes, sir.’
The young man took a taxi as far as the Alhambra. Then, mingling with the numerous pedestrians, he strolled along to Leicester Square. A little sigh, expressive of exultation, left his lips when he observed the man for whom he was searching at the same pitch engaged in cleaning a lady’s shoes. At first Carter felt a little troubled lest he should prove to be a different fellow, but on approaching closer his anxiety was allayed. He had taken particular notice of the bootblack on the preceding day, and it was undoubtedly he. The Secret Service man walked round the square, stepping into all the dust he could find, thereby causing his shoes to look badly in need of a polish. On returning to the bootblack he found that the lady had gone, leaving the man disengaged. He strolled slowly by as though he had not noticed him, reflecting that less suspicion would be caused if the man solicited his custom than if he went directly to him, and Carter wanted an opportunity to study him. As he had anticipated, so it happened.
‘Will I clean it the shoe, mister?’ asked a husky voice.
Carter glanced at the speaker, turned his gaze to his dusty shoes, and smiled.
‘They do look as though they could do with a polish,’ he admitted, and stepped up to the man, placing one of his feet on the little stand.
He felt a sense of disappointment. The bootblack’s accent was Italian, Pestalozzi was Italian. It was quite possible that the only sympathy between them was their nationality. Then he remembered the shiny boots that did not need polishing, the conversation carried on in low voices. As the bootblack assiduously cleaned his shoes, he studied him. He was clad in the regulation uniform, and obviously was a member of the bootblacks’ brigade. Carter took careful note of his number, storing it in his mind for further reference. Once or twice the man looked up, disclosing a lean, swarthy face, containing a pair of piercing, dark eyes, a somewhat broad nose and ugly mouth. He apparently possessed none of the sunny characteristics so typical of his countrymen; in fact, he appeared sullen and morose. Except for a casual remark about the weather, he made no attempt at conversation, and when Carter strove to get him to talk, either answered in monosyllables or did not reply at all.
When the shoes were cleaned, Carter tossed him a shilling and walked on to Jones’ Restaurant. He ascended to the first floor and, finding a table by a window, ordered tea. It had occurred to him that it would be difficult to find a more ideal position from which to keep watch. He was correct in his surmise. He was able to look down on the bootblack without the slightest risk of being observed himself. He dawdled over tea, his eyes seldom far from the Italian, but nothing of interest occurred. Occasionally a man or woman stopped to have their footgear cleaned, but none of them aroused anything but the utmost indifference in the man. He entered into conversation with none, accepted payment without much apparent gratitude, and took no further notice of them.
Six o’clock came and went, and Carter remained at his table. At last, it was close on the half hour, the bootblack packed up his gear and prepared to depart. Carter was surprised that he had stayed so long, for dusk had fallen, and he could have had little hope of obtaining a client for some time past. Had he been waiting for anybody? This idea was supported by the fact that when his belongings were neatly strapped up in their box he still loitered, glancing about him as though in expectation of the arrival of somebody. Presently, however, he slung the box on his back, and set off along Coventry Street in the direction of Piccadilly Circus.
If the waitress who had attended to Carter’s wants had wondered why he had tarried so long at the table by the window, she must have been vastly surprised when he suddenly started to his feet and darted out of the room. He was halfway down the stairs, when he remembered his bill, tore back, put half a crown into the girl’s hand, and asked her to pay it for him. Then he was gone again.
Carter was one of the most expert shadowers in the Secret Service, and he was quickly on the track of the Italian bootblack. The latter led him to the Circus, crossing to Swan and Edgar’s corner, where he stood waiting for a bus. Before long a number six arrived, and he boarded it, climbing to the upper deck. Carter went inside. Having no idea whither the man was bound, he took a twopenny ticket, and trusted to luck. He found he had to pay excess fare. The vehicle made its leisurely way along Regent Street, Oxford Street, passed Marble Arch, and turned up Edgware Road, and still the bootblack showed no signs of descending. At Warwick Avenue tube station, noting the conductor’s suspicious frown, Carter took another twopenny ticket. Almost directly afterwards, he surprised that worthy by deciding to get off. The Italian had descended at the corner of Shirland Road. Directly the bus started again, Carter rose from his seat and jumped off.
‘Why don’t you make up yer mind?’ came back to him in aggrieved tones from the puncher of tickets, as the vehicle disappeared into the darkness, which by then had fallen completely.
The young man chuckled to himself. He watched the bootblack cross the road and enter a dilapidated-looking house next to a school on the other side. He himself was quite hidden from view by a furniture van conveniently drawn up to the kerb. The bootblack unlocked the front door of the house, and entered. Obviously he lived there. Almost directly afterwards a light flared up in a room on the ground floor, and Carter had time to note the general disorder and tawdriness of the furniture before the man he had trailed crossed to the window and pulled down the blinds.
A little farther along, on the other side of the road, was a telephone kiosk. Carter waited ten minutes to make sure that his quarry had no intention of leaving the house, at least for the time being; then walked along to the box and rang up his headquarters. Sir Leonard Wallace was still in his office, and listened approvingly to his subordinate’s report.
‘I’ll send someone to keep watch while you make enquiries,’ he remarked, when he had heard all Carter had to tell him. ‘That house must be kept under observation. It presents a slender hope, it is true, but still there is a hope.’
Carter returned to his post and, for the next quarter of an hour, kept his eyes glued on the building from a well-sheltered point. A crowd of ill-dressed, noisy children played round a lamp post in his vicinity, some of the inhabitants of the neighbouring houses stood at their gates chatting, every few minutes buses stopped close by, those coming from the West End being packed with men and women released from work for the day. It was not exactly a quiet region. At last a saloon car glided round the corner from Sutherland Avenue, and stopped by a chapel. A man got out; walked casually along towards Carter, while the motor turned, and disappeared. The newcomer was tall and thin, and, as he passed under a lamp, the watcher recognised the seemingly lugubrious, long, narrow face of his colleague, Cartright. He stepped from his coign of vantage.
‘Hullo, Jimmy,’ he greeted him. ‘That’s the house over there – the first from the school. You get a good view of anyone leaving or entering it on account of that lamp outside the front door.’ He proceeded to give a careful description of the bootblack, and made certain that Cartright would know the man if he saw him. ‘Any orders from the chief?’ he asked.
‘Only the same as those I believe he has already given you,’ was the reply. ‘He wants you to find out everything possible about the fellow and the house he is in. Sir Leonard will be along this way about nine.’
‘Well, look here, I’ll make enquiries round this neighbourhood first; then I’ll rout out the secretary or manager or whatever he is of the Bootblacks’ Association.’
‘Right. The car is waiting in Sutherland Avenue, if you want it. I told West you probably would. You’d better have dinner before you return to relieve me.’
‘It all depends if there is time. Cheer ho!’
Carter first went into a public house a little way along the road and ordered himself a whisky and soda. He began to chat with a large and voluble lady behind the bar, and adroitly steered the conversation in the right direction. They had discussed the general decrepitude of houses in that part of Shirland Road and a good many of their inhabitants, before they came to the one that interested Carter. She gave him his lead by describing a building on the other side as a perfect disgrace.
‘It’s such a shame,’ she drawled, ‘and this used to be such a nice neighbourhood. The landlord oughter be ashamed of himself – that he ought. I call it an eyesore, though the rest aren’t much better.’
‘Of course I don’t know the district very well,’ Carter told her, ‘but it has struck me whenever I’ve been round this way, that the first house on this side – the one next door to the school – is about the most decayed of the lot. I suppose it is owned by the same landlord, isn’t it?’
‘Lord bless you, no! There’s umpteen landlords own these houses and, if you ask me, they’re all as bad as one another. Letting the places go to rack and ruin, that’s what they’re doing, but I don’t suppose they care as long as they get their rent.’
‘Still,’ persisted Carter, ‘tidy tenants can improve even dilapidated houses by growing flowers in the front, banging up clean curtains and that sort of thing. The people in the house of which I am speaking don’t seem to have any of what you might describe as home pride.’
‘Home pride!’ snorted the lady behind the bar. ‘I should think not indeed. Do you know who live in that house?’
He smiled.
‘No; I’m afraid I don’t.’
‘Foreigners, all the blessed lot of them. And what can you expect from foreigners? An Eyetalian family used to rent the whole house, or most of it, and – it wasn’t so bad then, but their circumstances improved, and they moved. They kept it on, though, and let it out in flats. An ice cream man lives in the basement with his wife and half a dozen kids – where they put them all I don’t know. The ground floor is rented by a man who lives all by himself – he’s a bootblack I think. The top was empty for a long time, but lately it’s been taken by three brothers – nasty looking beggars all of them; they come in here sometimes and drink like fish. It’s good for the house, of course, but I’d as soon they kept away. Now, mister, how can you expect people of that sort to try to make a house look nice?’
‘No, I suppose they’re hardly the kind to bother.’ Carter answered somewhat absently, though he took care to hide the elation which had suddenly filled him.
It seemed to him that the unexpected had happened; that Sir Leonard Wallace’s extraordinary power of intuition had once again proved correct. When Carter had first mentioned the bootblack to the chief the latter had seemed greatly interested even then. Although there had been nothing much to go on, he had at once assumed that the man was in some way connected with the anarchists. It was he who, by searching enquiry, had guided Carter’s mind back to every detail of Pestalozzi’s apparel, had ascertained from him that the Italian’s boots had not needed cleaning, and had pointed out the importance of the fact. Now, having received instructions to follow the bootblack and learn everything he could about him, Carter had discovered the significant circumstance that the second floor of the house in which the man lived had lately been taken by three foreigners, who called themselves brothers. Were they brothers by blood or brothers by association? In short, were they the three anarchists for whom the men of the Secret Service and the Special Branch of Scotland Yard had been searching for so long?
Carter turned to the large lady behind the bar, hoping to get a description that would fit Pestalozzi, when the door of the saloon opened. Cartright entered; he was whistling a tune that Secret Service men often used to warn each other of their presence, and of the fact that they had news, or that there was danger about. At the same time Carter caught a glimpse of the bootblack in the public bar, and drew back for fear the man would recognise him. Next to the Italian was someone else, of whom he could only see an arm and shoulder. The landlady had a better view – she had half turned at the sound of the newcomers’ voices and leaning towards Carter she whispered:
‘Well I never! Talk of angels, they say, and you hear the flutter of their wings – not that these are angels by any means. It’s the folk I was telling you about!’
At that moment Carter saw the face of the man next to the bootblack, and recognised it – he was Pestalozzi.