The Mummy and Miss Nitocris Part 19

"Yes."

"And, believing this, and knowing thee to have dealings with me, they bribed thee to come here as my friend and fellow-dealer and spy upon my actions, so that they might have evidence against me and cast me into prison. Is that so?"

"Yes."

"Late on the last night but one thou didst go to the house of Nicol Hendry, who is no common catcher of thieves, but a spy of nations whose business is with the great ones of the earth. Tell me: whom did thy business with him concern?"

"Prince Oscarovitch and yourself."

"What were his orders?"

"To watch you both, especially you, and find out when you went to him, and why you were sometimes a poor devil in a miserable hole like this, and sometimes a swell going to swagger places with him."

"How were you going to do this?"

"I know your servant or chum, Mr Pentana. I've lent him money: and Peter Petroff, the Prince's particular servant, gambles like a lord, and he owes me and a friend of mine a lot of money. We were going to work through them."

"It is enough; and well for you that you have answered truthfully. Now tell me: do you know how to use a revolver?"

"Never fired a shot in my life."

Phadrig went to the secretaire and took a common, cheap revolver, identical with thousands of others which our criminally careless Government allows to be bought every day without the production of a licence--just a hooligan's weapon, in fact--went back and put it into the Jew's hand. He raised the hand several times, and pointed the muzzle to the temple, keeping the forefinger on the trigger. At length he let go the wrist, and said in a gentle, persuading tone:

"That is the way to handle a revolver when you are going to shoot, my dear Josephus. Now, let me see if you can do it by yourself."

With mechanical precision the Jew's arm went up until the muzzle touched his temple. Again and again he did the same thing at Phadrig's bidding, till at length he said rather more peremptorily:

"Now pull the trigger!"

The finger tightened and the hammer clicked. Five times more was the operation repeated, and then Phadrig gently took the revolver and laid the hand down. He went to the secretaire and loaded the six chambers, c.o.c.ked the weapon and put it into the right hand side-pocket of the lounge jacket which Josephus was wearing, and said deliberately:

"Now remember, my dear Josephus: you will go straight back to your office in Waterloo Road and let yourself in with your key. In your private room you will see a man who wants to rob you of some valuable papers. You will be ruined if he gets them, so you must take your pistol out of your pocket and shoot him. Do you quite understand me?"

"Yes; I am to shoot him."

"That is right. Now, if you do not go he will have them before you get there. Get up and we will say good-night. You must not put your hand in your pocket until you see the man who wants to rob you. Good-night.

There is your hat."

"Good-night!"

Mr Isaac Josephus put on his hat and walked away to his death with the motions of a mechanical doll.

CHAPTER XIX

THE HORUS STONE

An hour later Phadrig, the poor curio dealer, had disappeared, and Mr Phadrig Amena, the wonder-working Adept, clad in evening clothes and a light overcoat, alighted from a hansom at the great entrance to the Royal Court Mansions. The huge, gorgeously uniformed guardian of the Gilded Gates was saluting at his elbow in an instant, for a friend of Princes is a very great man in the eyes of even such dignitaries as he.

"The Prince expects you, sir," he said, loud enough to make the t.i.tle heard by those who were standing by. "Will you be good enough to walk in? I will discharge the cab."

He stood aside with a bow and another salute, and Phadrig walked lightly up the broad steps. Peter Petroff opened the door of the flat, bowing low, and conducted him to his master's sanctum. Evidently he was expected, for the coffee apparatus stood ready on the Moorish table beside the cosy chair which he was wont to occupy. The Prince, who was standing on a white bear's skin by the mantel, motioned him to it, saying:

"Ah, Phadrig, my friend, punctual, of course; and equally, of course, you have something important to impart. Your wire just caught me in time to put off an engagement which, happily, is of no great consequence. There's the coffee, and you'll find the cigars you like in the second drawer. Now, what is the news?"

His guest filled a cup of coffee and took a cigar and lit it before he replied. Then, turning to the Prince, he said in his usual slow, even tone:

"Highness, I regret to say that my news is both urgent and bad."

"It would naturally be urgent," said the Prince, turning quickly towards him, "but bad I hardly expected. Well, all news cannot be good. What is it?"

"I fear that my warning was even more urgent than I thought it myself--I mean, in point of time. Your Highness is already being watched."

"What! A Prince of the Empire, the man whom they call the Modern Skobeleff, an intimate of Nicholas! What should I be watched for?"

exclaimed the Prince, half angry and half astonished. "The thing is ridiculous; another of your dreams!"

"Ridiculous it may be, Highness," replied Phadrig, quite unruffled, "but it is no dream; and, moreover, the eyes which are watching you are keen ones--and they are everywhere. You are under the surveillance of the International Police."

These were not words which even a Prince of the Holy Russian Empire cared to hear. Oscarovitch was silent for a few moments, for the earnestness, and yet the calmness, with which they were spoken made it impossible for him to doubt them. As he had asked, what could such a man as he be watched for by this thousand-eyed organisation of which he himself was one of the supreme Directors? It was impossible that these people could suspect his great scheme of treachery and self-aggrandis.e.m.e.nt. That was known to only three persons in the world--himself, Phadrig, and the Princess Hermia; and the Princess, the woman who had willingly sacrificed her brilliant young husband to her guilty love and her boundless ambition--no, she could be no traitress.

It must be something else: and yet what?

He took two or three rapid turns up and down the room, chewing and puffing at his cigar, until he stopped before Phadrig, and said quietly, but with angry eyes:

"Very well, we will grant that I am watched by the International. Tell me how you came to know it."

The Egyptian took a few sips of his coffee, and then related almost word for word his interview with Josephus. He ended by saying:

"Your Highness may believe or not now as you please, but I presume you will when you read in your paper to-morrow morning of the suicide of a respectable Hebrew merchant named Isaac Josephus at the address which I have mentioned."

Oscarovitch had pretty strong nerves, and he was well accustomed to regard any kind of crime as a quite proper means of furthering political ends: but there was something in this man's utter soullessness and the weird horror of the crime which he had just accomplished--for by this time his victim would be already lying self-slain on the floor of his own spider's lair--that chilled him, cold-blooded as he was. He looked at him lounging in his chair and calmly puffing the smoke from his half-smiling lips as though he hadn't a thought beyond the little blue rings that he was making.

"That was a devilish thing to do, Phadrig!" he said, a little above a whisper.

"Devilish, possibly, Highness, but necessary, of a certainty," was the quiet reply. "You will agree with me that Nicol Hendry is a dangerous antagonist even for you, and as for me--no doubt he thinks that he can crush me under his foot whenever he chooses to put it down. I should like to know his feelings as he reads of his spy's suicide when he had only just got to work."

"It will certainly be somewhat of a shock to him and his colleagues, and for that reason I am inclined, on second thoughts, to agree that it was necessary, and ghastly, as I confess; it seems to me, I think, that you took the best means to give them a salutary warning. After all, the life of an individual, and that individual a Jew, does not count for much when the fate of empires is at stake. What puzzles me is how these fellows came to suspect me, and what do they suspect me of. I suppose you have no idea on the subject, have you?"

He looked at him keenly as he spoke, but he might as well have looked at the face of a graven image. Then, like a flash of inspiration, the Zastrow affair leapt into his mind. Had his connection with that, by any extraordinary chance, come to the knowledge of the International? The thought was distinctly disquieting. Phadrig had helped in this with his strange arts. He would discuss this phase of the matter with him afterwards.

Phadrig replied, returning his glance:

"Highness, I have only one explanation to offer, and that you have already refused. Were I to speak of any other it would only be vain invention."

"You mean about Professor Marmion and his mathematical miracles?" said the Prince somewhat uneasily.