American consul at Jerez, of his charity and kindliness of heart, journeyed out to call upon him, and received a cold welcome. A message came to him that the proprietor was in bed with gout, and neither then or at any time desired visitors, which so enraged the well-meaning consul that he never called again. The American’s visits were of a fleeting character. He was in residence less than a month in the year. Then one day he came and remained. His name was registered as Senor Walter G. Brown, of New York. The English police sought him as George T. Baggin, an absconding promoter, broker, bucket-shop keeper, and all-round thief. After a time he began to receive visitors, who stayed on also.
Then came a period when Mr. Walter G. Brown became aggressively patriotic. He caused to be erected on the topmost tower of his mansion an enormous flagstaff, from which flew on rare occasions a ridiculously small Stars and Stripes.
At night, the place of the flag was taken by a number of thick copper strands, and simple-minded villagers in the country about reported strange noises, for all the world like the rattling of dried peas in a tin canister.
On the evening of a wintry day, many people journeyed up the steep pathway that led to the mansion on the hill. They came singly and in pairs, mostly riding, although one stout man drove up in a little victoria drawn by two panting mules. The last to come was Mr. Baggin, an unpleasant smile on his square face.
By the side of his horse trotted a breathless man. in a tattered coat, his cropped head bare.
“I will show you where to stand,” Baggin said.
“There is a curtain that covers a door. The man will pass by that curtain, and I shall be with him. I will hold his arm — so. Then I will say, ‘ Count Poltavo, I do not trust you,’ and then—”
The ragged man swept the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand, for the path was> steep.
“And then,” he grunted, “I will strike.”
“Surely,” warned the other.
The man grinned.
“I shall not fail,” he said significantly. They disappeared into the great house — it is worthy of note that Baggin opened the door with a key of his own — and darkness fell upon the hill and upon the valley.
Far away, lights twinkling through the trees showed where Jerez lay.
24. The Nine Bears
The room in which the Nine Men sat was large, even as rooms go in Spain. It had the appearance of a small lecture hall. Heavy curtains of dark blue velvet hid the tall windows, and electric lights, set at intervals in the ceiling, provided light. The little desks at which the men sat were placed so as to form a horseshoe.
Of the nine, it is possible that one knew the other, and that some guessed the identity of all. It was difficult to disguise Grayson, who in his life of inactivity had grown exceedingly stout, and yet with all the trickery of the black cloaks they wore and the crepe masks that hid their faces, it was hard enough to single even him from his fellows. The last man had reached his seat when one who sat at the extreme end of the horseshoe on the president’s right, rose and asked: “What of Poltavo, brother?”
“He has not yet arrived,” was the muffled reply.
“Perhaps, then, it is well that I should say what I have to say before his return,” said the first speaker.
He rose to his feet, and eight pairs of eyes turned towards him.
“Gentlemen,” he began, “the time has come when our operations must cease.”
A murmur interrupted him, and he stopped.
“What is it?” he asked sharply.
“Let us have more light,” said a mask at the end of the horseshoe, and pointed to the ceiling where only half of the lights glowed. Baggin nodded, and the man rose and made his way to the curtained recess where the switches were.
“No, no, no!” said Baggin quickly — for he suddenly realised that there was something hidden by the curtain, a sinister figure of a man in convict shirt, fingering the edge of a brand-new knife. So Baggin pictured him.
The masked man halted in surprise.
“No, no,” repeated Baggin, and beckoned him back. “For what I have to say I need no light; you interrupt me, brother.”
With a muttered apology the man resumed his seat.
“I have said,” continued Baggin, “that the time has come when we must seriously consider the advisability of dispersing.”
A murmur of assent met these words.
“This organisation of ours has grown and grown until it has become unwieldy,” he went on.
“We are all business men, so there is no need for me to enlarge upon the danger that attends the house that undertakes responsibilities which it cannot personally attend to.
“We have completed a most wonderful organisation. We have employed all the ingenuities of modern science to further our plans. We have agents in every part of Europe, in India, Egypt, and America. So long as these agents have been ignorant of the identity and location of their employers, we were safe. To ensure this, we have worked through Count Poltavo, a gentleman who came to us some time ago — under peculiar conditions.
“We have employed, too, and gratefully employed, Catherine Dominguez, a charming lady, as to whose future you need have no fear. Some time ago, as you all know, we established wireless stations in the great capitals, as being the safest method by which our instructions might be transmitted without revealing to our agents the origin of these commands. A code was drawn up, certain arrangements of letters and words, and this code was deciphered and our secret revealed through the ingenuity of one man. We were prepared to meet him on a business basis. We communicated with him by wireless, and agreed to pay a sum not only to himself, but to two others, if he kept our secret and agreed to make no written record of theif discovery. They promised, but their promise was broken, and it was necessary to employ other methods.
“I am fully prepared to accept responsibility for my share of the result, just as I am prepared to share responsibility for any other act which circumstances may have rendered necessary.
“And now, gentlemen, I come to the important part in my speech. By sharing the result of our operations we may each go our way, in whatever guise we think most suitable, to the enjoyment of our labours.
“In a short time for many of us the statute of limitations will have worked effectively; and for others there are States in South America that would welcome us and offer us every luxury that money can buy or heart desire.
“Yet I would not advise the scattering of our forces. Rather, I have a scheme which will, I think, enable us to extract the maximum of enjoyment from life, at a minimum of risk. With that end in view, I have expended from our common fund a sum equal to half-a-million English pounds. I have completed elaborate arrangements, which I shall ask you to approve of; I have fashioned our future.” He threw out his hands with a gesture of pride. “It is for you to decide whether we shall go our several ways, each in fear of the weakness of the other, our days filled with dread, our nights sleepless with doubt, or whether in new circumstances we shall live together in freedom, in happiness, and in unity.”
Again the murmured applause.
“But there is an element of danger which must be removed,” Baggin went on; “ — between freedom and us there lies a shadow.”
He stopped and looked from mask to mask.
“That shadow,” he said slowly, “is Count Ivan Poltavo, the man who knows our secrets, who has done our work, the one man in the world who holds our lives in the hollow of his—”