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The Yellow Streak

W >> Williams, Valentine >> The Yellow Streak




The manager clicked in sympathy. He despatched a lady typist and a
chambermaid to help Mary out of the car.

"For a doctor," he said, "it ees fortunate. We 'ave an English doctor
staying in ze hotel now--a sheep's doctor. He is in ze lounge. Eef you
come, _hein?_"

The "sheep's doctor" proved to be a doctor off one of the big liners, a
clean-shaven, red-faced, hearty sort of person who readily volunteered
his services. As Robin was about to follow him into the lift, the
manager stopped him.

"Zere was a shentleman call to see Mees Trevert," he said, "two or three
time 'e been 'ere ... a Sherman shentleman. 'E leave 'er a note ... will
you take it?"

Greatly puzzled, Robin Greve balanced in his hands the letter which
the manager produced from a pigeon-hole. Then he tore open the envelope.

DEAR MISS TREVERT [he read], I was extremely
sorry to miss you this morning. Directly I received
your message I called at your hotel, but, though I
have been back twice, I have not found you in.
Circumstances have arisen which make it imperative that
I should see you as soon as possible. This is _most
urgent_. I will come back at four o'clock, as I cannot
get away before. Do not leave the hotel _on any pretext_
until you have seen me and Dulkinghorn's letter as
identification. You are in _grave danger_.

The note was signed "W. Schulz."

"H'm," was Robin's comment; "he writes like an Englishman, anyway."

He ascertained the number of Mary Trevert's room and went up to her
floor in the lift. He waited in the corridor outside the room for the
doctor to emerge, and lit a cigarette to while away the time. It was not
until he had nearly finished his second cigarette that the doctor
appeared.

The doctor hesitated on seeing Robin. Then he stepped close up to him.
Robin noticed that his red face was more flushed than usual and his eyes
were troubled.

"What's this cock-and-bull story about gas you've put up to the
manager?" he said bluntly in a low voice. "The girl's been doped with
chloroform, as well you know. You'll be good enough to come downstairs
to the manager with me ..."

Robin took out his note-case and produced a card.

"That's my name," he said. "You'll see that I'm a barrister ..."

"Well?" said the doctor in a non-committal voice after he had read the
card.

"I'm not surprised to hear you say that Miss Trevert has been doped,"
Robin remarked. "I found her here in a house on the outskirts of
Rotterdam in the hands of two men, one of whom is believed to be
implicated in a mysterious case of suspected murder in England. Through
the part he played this morning, he has probably run his head into the
noose. But he'll have it out again if we delay an instant. I told the
manager that yarn about the dentist to avoid enquiries and waste of
time. I have here a note from some man I don't know, addressed to Miss
Trevert, warning her of a grave danger threatening her. It corroborates
to some extent what I have told you. Here ... read it for yourself!"

He handed the doctor the note signed "W. Schulz."

The doctor read it through carefully.

"What I would propose to you," said Robin, "is that we two should go off
at once to this Herr Schulz and find out exactly what he knows. Then we
can decide what action there is to be taken ..."

He paused for the doctor's reply. The latter searched Robin's face with
a glance.

"I'm your man," he said shortly. "And, by the way, my name's
Collingwood ... Robert Collingwood."

"There's a car downstairs," said Robin, "and a guide to show us the way.
Shall we go?"

Five minutes later, under the newsboy's expert guidance, the car drew up
in front of the small clean house with the neat green door bearing the
name of "Schulz." Leaving the boy to mind the car, they rang the bell.
The door was opened by the fat woman in the pink print dress.

Robin gave the woman his card. On it he had written "About Miss
Trevert." Speaking in German the woman bade them rather roughly to bide
where they were, and departed after closing the front door in their
faces. She did not keep them waiting long, however, for in about a
minute she returned. Herr Schulz would receive the gentlemen, she said.

Within, the house was spotlessly clean with that characteristic German
house odour which always seems to be a compound of cleaning material and
hot grease. Up a narrow staircase, furnished in plain oil-cloth with
brass stair-rods, they went to a landing on the first floor. Here the
woman motioned them back and, bending her head in a listening attitude,
knocked.

"_Herein_!" cried a guttural German voice.

The room into which they entered would have been entitled 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 sturdily 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 sturdiness 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-shell 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 class.

"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.

"Wass I not right to warn her?"

"Indeed, you were," Robin asserted 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 knob! Sit down, sit down, and while I
mix you a drink, you shall tell me about this!"




CHAPTER XXV


THE READING OP 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 glasses.

"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 circumstances.
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 glass, "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.

Herr Schulz listened attentively and without interruption until Robin
had reached the end of his story.

"There's one thing you haven't explained," he said, "and that's how Miss
Trevert came to walk into the hands of these precious ruffians ..."

"There, perhaps, I can help you," said the doctor from behind one of
Herr Schulz's rank cigars; "I have it from Miss Trevert herself. Some
one impersonating you Mr.--er, ahem,--Schulz--telephoned her this
morning, after she had left her letter of introduction here, asking her
to come out to lunch at your country-house. She suspected nothing and
went off in the car they sent for her ..."

"By George!" said the big man thoughtfully; "I suspected some game of
this kind when I heard of the attempt to get at that letter of
introduction. If I only could have got hold of Marbran this morning ..."

"Marbran!" said Robin thoughtfully. "When I read Dulkinghorn's letter
just now I thought I had heard that name before. Of course--Victor
Marbran! That was it! I remember now! He knew Hartley Parrish in the old
days. Parrish once said that Marbran would do him an injury if he could.
Who is Marbran, sir?"

All unconsciously he paid the tribute of 'sir' to Herr Schulz's
undoubted habit of command.

"Victor Marbran," replied the big man, "is Elias van der Spyck & Co., a
firm which made millions in the war by trading with the enemy. In every
neutral country there were, of course, firms which specialized in
importing contraband for the use of the Germans, but van der Spyck & Co.
brought the evasion of the blockade to a fine art. They covered up their
tracks, however, with such consummate art that we could never bring
anything home to them. In fact, it was only after the armistice that we
began to learn something of the immense scope of their operations. There
was a master brain behind them. But it was never discovered. It strikes
me, however, that we are on the right track at last ..."

"By Jove ...!" exclaimed Robin impressively. "Hartley Parrish!..."

The big man raised a hand.

"_Attentions!_" he interposed suavely. "The chain is not yet complete. I
wonder what this van der Spyck letter of Miss Trevert's contained that
made Victor Marbran and the secretary chap so desperately anxious to get
hold of it. For you understand, don't you?" he said briskly, turning to
Robin, "that they were after that and that alone. And they risked penal
servitude in this country to get it ..."

Robin nodded.

"To save their necks in another," he said.

"I have the letter here," mildly remarked the doctor from his corner of
the room. "Miss Trevert gave it to me!"

He produced a white envelope and drew from it a folded square of
slatey-blue paper. In great excitement Robin sprang forward.

"You're a downy bird, Doctor, I must say," he remarked, "fancy keeping
it up your sleeve all this time!"

He eagerly took the letter, spread it out on the table, and read it
through whilst Herr Schulz looked over his shoulder.

"Code, eh?" commented the big man, shaking his head humorously. "If it
beats Dulkinghorn, it beats me!"

From his note-case Robin now drew a folded square of paper identical in
colour with the letter spread out before them.

"I found this on the carpet beside Parrish's body," he said. "Look, it's
exactly the same paper ..."

Behind the tortoise-shell spectacles the big man's eyes narrowed down to
pin-points as he caught sight of the sheet which Robin unfolded and its
series of slits.

"Aha!" he cried--and his voice rang out clear through the room--"the
grill, eh? Well, well, to think of that!"

He took the slotted sheet of paper from Robin's hands and laid it over
the letter so that it exactly covered it, edge to edge and corner to
corner. In this way the greater part of the typewriting in the letter
was covered over, and only the words appearing in the slots could be
read. And thus it was that Robin Greve, Herr Schulz, and Dr.
Collingwood, leaning shoulder to shoulder, read the message that came to
Hartley Parrish in the library at Harkings....

ELIAS VAN DER SPYCK & CO.

GENERAL IMPORTERS

ROTTERDAM Rotterdam 25th Nov.

_Codes_
A.B.C.
Liebler's

_Personal_

Dear Mr. Parrish,

Your favour of even date to hand and contents
noted. _The last_ delivery of steel was to time but we have had
_warning_ from the railway authorities that labour troubles at the
docks are likely to delay future consignments. _If you don't_
mind we should prefer to _settle_ the question of future
delivery _by Nov. 27_ as we have a board meeting on the 30th
inst. While we fully appreciate your own difficulties with
labour at home, _you_ will understand that this is a question
which we cannot afford to adjourn _sine_ _die._

Yours faithfully,

pro ELIAS VAN DER SPYCK & CO.

"'The last ... warning,'" Robin read out, "'if you don't ... settle ...
by Nov. 27 ... you ... die ...!'"

He looked up. "Last Saturday," he said, "was the 27th, the day that
Parrish died ..."

"The grill," remarked the big man authoritatively, "is one of the oldest
dodges known to the Secret Service. It renders a conventional code
absolutely undecipherable as long as it is skilfully worded, as it is in
this case. You send your conventional code by one route, your key by
another. I make no doubt that this was the way in which van der Spyck &
Co. transacted their business with Hartley Parrish. They simply posted
their conventional code letters through the post in the ordinary way,
confident that there was nothing in them to catch the eye of the
Censor's Department. The key might be sent in half a dozen different
ways, by hand, concealed in a newspaper, in a parcel ..."

"So this," said Robin, pointing at the letter, "was what caused Hartley
Parrish to make his will. It would lead one to suppose that it was what
induced him to commit suicide were not the presumption so strong that he
was murdered. But who killed him? Was it Jeekes or Marbran?"

Herr Schulz pitched his cigar-stump into an ash-tray.

"That," he said, "is the question which I am going to ask you gentlemen
to help me answer. You will realize that legally we have not a leg to
stand on. We are in a foreign country where, without first getting a
warrant from London, we can take no steps whatever to run these fellows
in. To get the Dutch police to move against these gentry in the matter
of the assault upon Miss Trevert would waste valuable time. And we have
to move quickly--before these two lads can get away. I therefore propose
that we start this instant for the Villa Bergendal and try, if we are
not too late, to force Marbran or Jeekes or both of them to a
confession. That done, we can hold them if possible until we can get the
Dutch police to apprehend them at the instance of Miss Trevert. Then we
can communicate with the English police. It's all quite illegal, of
course! You have a car, I think, Mr. Greve! You will come with us, Dr.
Collingwood? Good! Then let us start at once!"

Robin intervened with a proposal that they should call _en route_ at his
hotel to see if there were any telegrams for him.

"Manderton knows I am in Rotterdam," he explained, "and he promised to
wire me the latest developments in the enquiry he is conducting."

"Miss Trevert should be fully recovered by this," put in the doctor;
"apart from a little sickness she is really none the worse for her
disagreeable experience. If there was anything you wanted to ask her ..."

"There is," said Robin promptly. "Her reply to one question," he
explained, turning to Herr Schulz, "will give us the certainty that
Parrish was murdered and did not commit suicide. It will not delay us
more than five minutes to stop at her hotel in passing, We will then
call in at my place. We should be at the Villa within half an hour from
now ..."

"Gentlemen," said Herr Schulz as they prepared to go, "I know my Mr.
Victor Marbran. You should all be armed."

Robin produced the pistol he had taken from Jeekes. Herr Schulz slipped
a Browning pistol into the breast-pocket of his jacket and, producing a
long-barrelled service revolver, gave it to the doctor.

"There are three of them, I gather, counting the chauffeur," commented
the big man, pulling on his overcoat, "so we shall be equally matched."

Darkness had fallen upon Rotterdam and the lights from the houses made
yellow streaks in the water of the canal as the car, piloted by Robin,
drove the party to Mary Trevert's hotel.

They found the girl, pale and anxious, in the lounge.

"Well, now," cried the doctor breezily, "and how are you feeling? Did
you take my advice and have some tea?"

"What has happened?" asked the girl; "I have been so anxious about you ..."

Her words were addressed to the doctor, but she looked at Robin.

"Mary," said Robin, "we are very near the truth now. But there is one
thing you can tell us. It is very important. When you heard the shot in
the library at Harkings, did you notice any other sound--before or
after?"

The girl paused to think.

"There was a sort of sharp cry and a thud ..."

"I know. But was there anything else? Do try and remember. It's so
important!"

The girl was silent for a moment. Then she said slowly:

"Yes, there was, now I come to think of it. Just as I tried the door--it
was locked, you know--there was a sort of hiss, harsh and rather loud,
from the room ..."

"A sort of hiss, eh? Something like a sneeze?"

"Yes. Only louder and ... and ... harsher!"

"Now, answer me carefully! Was this before or after the shot?"

"Oh, before! Just as I was rattling the doorhandle. The shot broke in
upon it...."

Robin turned to Herr Schulz, who stood with a grave face by his side.

"The silencer, you see, sir!" he said. Then to Mary he added: "Mary, we
are going off now. But we will be back within the hour and...."

"Oh, Robin," the girl broke in, "don't leave me alone! I don't feel safe
in this place after this morning. I'd much rather come with you...."

"Mary, it's quite impossible...." Robin began.

But the girl had turned to a table and taken from it her hat and fur.

"I don't care!" she exclaimed wilfully; "I'm coming anyhow. I refuse to
be left behind!"

She smiled at Herr Schulz as she spoke, and that gentleman's rather grim
face relaxed as he looked at her.

"I'm not sure I wouldn't say the same!" he remarked.

The upshot of it was that, despite Robin's objections, Mary Trevert
accompanied the party. She sat on the back seat, rather flushed and
excited, between Herr Schulz and the doctor, while Robin took the wheel
again. A few minutes' drive took them to the big hotel where Robin had
booked a room. They all waited in the car whilst he went to the office.

He was back in a minute, an open telegram in his hand.

"I believe I've got in my pocket," he cried, "the actual weapon with
which Hartley Parrish was killed!"

And he read from the telegram:

"Mastertons gunsmiths sold last July pair of Browning automatics
identical with that found on Parrish to Jeekes who paid with Parrish's
cheque."

The message was signed "Manderton."

At that moment a man wearing a black bowler hat and a heavy frieze
overcoat came hurrying out of the hotel.

"Mr. Greve!" he cried as Robin, who was back in the driving-seat, was
releasing the brake. "Did you have the wire from the Yard saying I was
coming?" he asked. "Probably I beat the telegraph, though. I came by
air!"

Then he tipped his hat respectfully at Herr Schulz.

"This is Detective-Inspector Manderton, of Scotland Yard, sir," said
Robin.

The big man beamed a smile of friendly recognition.

"Mr. Manderton and I are old friends," he said. "How are you,
Manderton? I didn't expect you to recognize me in these duds ..."

"I'd know you anywhere, sir," said the detective with unwonted
cordiality.

"Have you got your warrant, Manderton?" asked Herr Schulz.

"Aye, I have, sir," replied the detective. "And I've a colleague from
the Dutch police who's going along with me to effect the arrest ..."

"Jeekes, eh?"

"That's the party, sir, charged with wilful murder.... This is
Commissary Boomjes, of the Rotterdam Criminal Investigation Department!"

A tall man with a short black beard had approached the car. It was
decided that the whole party should proceed to the Villa Bergendal
immediately. Manderton sat next to Robin and the Dutch police officer
perched himself on the footboard.

"And where did you pick _him_ up, I'd like to know?" whispered Manderton
in Robin's ear with a backward jerk of the head, as they glided through
the brightly lit streets.

"D'you mean the doctor?" asked Robin.

"No, your other friend!"

"Miss Trevert had a letter to him. Something in the Secret Service,
isn't he?"

Mr. Manderton snorted.

"'Something in the Secret Service,'" he repeated disdainfully. "Well, I
should say he was. If you want to know, Mr. Greve, he's the head!"




CHAPTER XXVI


THE FIGURE IN THE DOORWAY

The rain was coming down in torrents and the night was black as pitch
when, leaving the lights of Rotterdam behind, the car swung out on to
the main road leading to the Villa Bergendal. Thanks to a powerful
headlight, Robin was able to get a good turn of speed out of her as soon
as they were clear of the city. As they slowed down at the gate in the
side road Herr Schulz tapped him on the shoulder.

"Better leave the car here and put the lights out," he counselled. "And
Miss Trevert should stay if the doctor here would remain to look after
her ..."

"You think there'll be a scrap?" whispered the doctor.

"With a man like Marbran," returned the Chief, "you never know what may
happen ..."

"Zere will be no faight," commented the Dutch police officer in
lugubrious accents, "my vriends, ve are too laite ..."

But the Chief insisted that Mary should stay behind and the doctor
agreed to act as her escort. Then in single file the party proceeded up
the drive, Robin in front, then the Dutchman, after him the Chief, and
Mr. Manderton in the rear.

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