The Unofficial Spy

"Tell him Mr. Montez is here," added Craig as we sat down.

The negress disappeared upstairs, and in a few minutes returned with the message that he would be down directly.

No sooner had the shuffle of her footsteps died away than Kennedy was on his feet, listening intently at the door. There was no sound. He took a chair and tiptoed out into the dark hall with it. Turning it upside down he placed it at the foot of the stairs with the four legs pointing obliquely up. Then he drew me into a corner with him.

How long we waited I cannot say. The next I knew was a muffled step on the landing above, then the tread on the stairs.

A crash and a deep volley of oaths in French followed as the man pitched headlong over the chair on the dark steps.

Kennedy whipped out his revolver and fired point-blank at the prostrate figure. I do not know what the ethics are of firing on a man when he is down, nor did I have time to stop to think.

Craig grasped my arm and pulled me toward the door. A sickening odour seemed to pervade the air. Upstairs there was shouting and banging of doors.

"Closer, Walter," he muttered, "closer to the door, and open it a little, or we shall both be suffocated. It was the Secret Service gun I shot off - the pistol that shoots stupefying gas from its vapour-filled cartridges and enables you to put a criminal out of commission without killing him. A pull of the trigger, the cap explodes, the gunpowder and the force of the explosion unite some capsicum and lycopodium, producing the blinding, suffocating vapour whose terrible effect you see. Here, you upstairs," he shouted, "advance an inch or so much as show your heads over the rail and I pump a shot at you, too. Walter, take the gun yourself. Fire at a move from them. I think the gases have cleared away enough now. I must get him before he recovers consciousness.

A tap at the door came, and without taking my eyes off the stairs I opened it. Burke slid in and gulped at the nauseous atmosphere.

"What's up?" he gasped. "I heard a shot. Where's Kennedy?"

I motioned in the darkness. Kennedy's electric bull's-eye flashed up at that instant and we saw him deftly slip a bright pair of manacles on the wrists of the man on the floor, who was breathing heavily, while blood flowed from a few slight cuts due to his fall.

Dexterously as a pickpocket Craig reached into the man's coat, pulled out a packet of papers, and gazed eagerly at one after another. From among them he unfolded one written in French to Madame Marie de Nevers some weeks before. I translate:

  DEAR MARIE: Herr Schmidt informs me that his agent in the War
  Department at Washington, U.S.A., has secured some important
  information which will interest the Government for which Herr
  Schmidt is the agent - of course you know who that is.

  It is necessary that you should carry the packet which will be
  handed to you (if you agree to my proposal) to New York by the
  steamer Tripolitania.  Go to the Vandeveer Hotel and in a few
  days, as soon as a certain exchange can be made, either our
  friend in Washington or myself will call on you, using the name
  Gonzales.  In return for the package which you carry he will hand
  you another.  Lose no time in bringing the second package back
  to Paris.

  I have arranged that you will receive ten thousand francs and
  your expenses for your services in this matter.  Under no
  conditions betray your connection with Herr Schmidt.  I was to
  have carried the packet to America myself and make the exchange
  but knowing your need of money I have secured the work for you.
  You had better take your maid, as it is much better to travel
  with distinction in this case.  If, however, you accept this
  commission I shall consider you in honour bound to surrender
  your claim upon my name for which I agree to pay you fifty
  thousand francs upon my marriage with the American heiress of
  whom you know.  Please let me know immediately through our
  mutual friend Henri Duval whether this proposal is satisfactory.
  Henri will tell you that fifty thousand is my ultimatum.

  "The scoundrel," ground out Kennedy.  "He lured his wife from
  Paris to New York, thinking the Paris police too acute for him,
  I suppose.  Then by means of the treachery of the maid Louise
  and his friend Duval, a crook who would even descend to play the
  part of valet for him and fall in love with the maid, he has
  succeeded in removing the woman who stood between him and an
  American fortune."

"Marie," rambled Chateaurouge as he came blinking, sneezing, and choking out of his stupor, "Marie, you are clever, but not too clever for me. This blackmailing must stop. Miss Lovelace knows something, thanks to you, but she shall never know all - never -=20 never. You - you - ugh! - Stop. Do you think you can hold me back now with those little white hands on my wrists? I wrench them loose - so - and - ugh! - What's this? Where am I?"

The man gazed dazedly at the manacles that held his wrists instead of the delicate hands he had been dreaming of as he lived over the terrible scene of his struggle with the woman who was his wife in the Vanderveer.

"Chateaurouge," almost hissed Kennedy in his righteous wrath, "fake nobleman, real swindler of five continents. Marie de Nevers alive stood in the way of your marriage to the heiress Miss Lovelace. Dead, she prevents it absolutely."

Craig continued to turn over the papers in his hand, as he spoke. At last he came to a smaller packet in oiled silk. As he broke the seal he glanced at it in surprise, then hurriedly exclaimed, "There, Burke. Take these to the War Department and tell them they can turn out their lights and stop their telegrams. This seems to be a copy of our government's plans for the fortification of the Panama Canal, heights of guns, location of searchlights, fire control stations, everything from painstaking search of official and confidential records. That is what this fellow obtained in exchange for his false blue prints of the supposed coaling station on the Pacific.

"I leave the Secret Service to find the leak in the War Department. What I am interested in is not the man who played spy for two nations and betrayed one of them. To me this adventurer who calls himself Chateaurouge is merely the murderer of Madame de Nevers."

Contents