Robert Barr

ROBERT BARR Ultimate Collection: 20 Novels & 65+ Detective Stories


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      "Why did you accost me?" he asked at last.

      "I saw you were a fellow-countryman; Frenchmen have helped me from time to time."

      "Let us sit down on this bench. What is your name, and how long have you been in England?"

      "My name is Adolph Carrier, and I have been in London three months."

      "So long as that? How have you lived all that time?"

      "Very poorly, as you may see. I sometimes get scraps from the French restaurants, and I sleep where I can."

      "Well, I think I can do better than that for you. Come with me."

      Picard took Delore to his house, letting himself in with a latchkey. Nobody seemed to occupy the place but himself and Lamoine. He led the way to the top story, and opened a door that communicated with a room entirely bare of furniture. Leaving Adolph there, Picard went downstairs again and came up shortly after with a lighted candle in his hand, followed by Lamoine, who carried a mattress.

      "This will do for you for tonight," said Picard, "and tomorrow we will see if we can get you any work. Can you make clocks?"

      "Oh yes, and good ones."

      "Very well. Give me a list of the tools and materials you need and I will get them for you."

      Picard wrote in a note-book the items Adolph recited to him, Lamoine watching their new employee closely, but saying nothing. Next day a table and a chair were put into the room, and in the afternoon Picard brought in the tools and some sheets of brass.

      Picard and Lamoine were somewhat suspicious of their recruit at first, but he went on industriously with his task, and made no attempt to communicate with anybody. They soon saw that he was an expert workman, and a quiet, innocent, half-daft, harmless creature, so he was given other things to do, such as cleaning up their rooms and going errands for beer and other necessities of life.

      When Adolph finished his first machine, he took it down to them and exhibited it with pardonable pride. There was a dial on it exactly like a clock, although it had but one hand.

      "Let us see it work," said Picard; "set it so that the bell will ring in three minutes."

      Adolph did as requested, and stood back when the machine began to work with a scarcely audible tick-tick. Picard pulled out his watch, and exactly at the third minute the hammer fell on the bell. "That is very satisfactory," said Picard; "now, can you make the next one slightly concave, so that a man may strap it under his coat without attracting attention? Such a shape is useful when passing the Customs."

      "I can make it any shape you like, and thinner than this one if you wish it."

      "Very well. Go out and get us a quart of beer, and we will drink to your success. Here is the money."

      Adolph obeyed with his usual docility, staying out, however, somewhat longer than usual. Picard, impatient at the delay, spoke roughly to him when he returned, and ordered him to go upstairs to his work. Adolph departed meekly, leaving them to their beer.

      "See that you understand that machine, Lamoine," said Picard. "Set it at half an hour."

      Lamoine, turning the hand to the figure VI on the dial, set the works in motion, and to the accompaniment of its quiet tick-tick they drank their beer.

      "He seems to understand his business," said Lamoine.

      "Yes," answered Picard. "What heady stuff this English beer is. I wish we had some good French bock; this makes me drowsy."

      Lamoine did not answer; he was nodding in his chair. Picard threw himself down on his mattress in one corner of the room; Lamoine, when he slipped from his chair, muttered an oath, and lay where he fell.

      Twenty minutes later the door stealthily opened, and Adolph's head cautiously reconnoitred the situation, coming into the silent apartment inch by inch, his crafty eyes rapidly searching the room and filling with malicious glee when he saw that everything was as he had planned. He entered quietly and closed the door softly behind him. He had a great coil of thin strong cord in his hand. Approaching the sleeping men on tiptoe, he looked down on them for a moment, wondering whether the drug had done its work sufficiently well for him to proceed. The question was settled for him with a suddenness that nearly unnerved him. An appalling clang of the bell, a startling sound that seemed loud enough to wake the dead, made him spring nearly to the ceiling. He dropped his rope and clung to the door in a panic of dread, his palpitating heart nearly suffocating him with its wild beating, staring with affrighted eyes at the machine which had given such an unexpected alarm. Slowly recovering command over himself, he turned his gaze on the sleepers: neither had moved; both were breathing as heavily as ever.

      Pulling himself together, he turned his attention first to Picard, as the more dangerous man of the two, should an awakening come before he was ready for it. He bound Picard's wrists tightly together; then his ankles, his knees, and his elbows. He next did the same for Lamoine. With great effort he got Picard in a seated position on his chair, tying him there with coil after coil of the cord. So anxious was he to make everything secure, that he somewhat overdid the business, making the two seem like seated mummies swathed in cord. The chairs he fastened immovably to the floor, then he stood back and gazed with a sigh at the two grim seated figures, with their heads drooping helplessly forward on their corded breasts, looking like silent effigies of the dead.

      Mopping his perspiring brow, Adolph now turned his attention to the machine that had startled him so when he first came in. He examined minutely its mechanism to see that everything was right. Going to the cupboard, he took up a false bottom and lifted carefully out a number of dynamite cartridges that the two sleepers had stolen from a French mine. These he arranged in a battery, tying them together. He raised the hammer of the machine, and set the hand so that the blow would fall in sixty minutes after the machinery was set in motion. The whole deadly combination he placed on a small table, which he shoved close in front of the two sleeping men. This done, he sat down on a chair patiently to await the awakening. The room was situated at the back of the house, and was almost painfully still, not a sound from the street penetrating to it. The candle burnt low, guttered and went out, but Adolph sat there and did not light another. The room was still only half in darkness, for the moon shone brightly in at the window, reminding Adolph that it was just a month since he had looked out on a moonlit street in Paris, while his brother lay murdered in the room below. The hours dragged along, and Adolph sat as immovable as the two figures before him. The square of moonlight, slowly moving, at last illuminated the seated form of Picard, imperceptibly climbing up, as the moon sank, until it touched his face. He threw his head first to one side, then back, yawned, drew a deep breath, and tried to struggle.

      "Lamoine," he cried "Adolph. What the devil is this? I say, here. Help!

       I am betrayed."

      "Hush," said Adolph, quietly. "Do not cry so loud. You will wake Lamoine, who is beside you. I am here; wait till I light a candle, the moonlight is waning."

      "Adolph, you fiend, you are in league with the police."

      "No, I am not. I will explain everything in a moment. Have patience." Adolph lit a candle, and Picard, rolling his eyes, saw that the slowly awakening Lamoine was bound like himself.

      Lamoine, glaring at his partner and not understanding what had happened, hissed—

      "You have turned traitor, Picard; you have informed, curse you!"

      "Keep quiet, you fool. Don't you see I am bound as tightly as you?"

      "There has been no traitor and no informing, nor need of any. A month ago tonight, Picard, there was blown into eternity a good and honest man, who never harmed you or any one. I am his brother. I am Adolph Delore, who refused to make your infernal machine for you. I am much changed since then; but perhaps now you recognise me?"

      "I swear to God," cried Picard, "that I did not do it. I was in London at the time. I can prove it. There is no use in handing me over to the police, even though, perhaps, you think you can terrorise this poor wretch into lying against me."

      "Pray to the God,