The Fourth Plague by Edgar Wallace

Author:Edgar Wallace
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MysteriousPress.com/Open Road
Published: 2014-11-25T21:57:36+00:00

X. —A WAY OF TILLIZINI’S

TILLIZINI WAS SITTING IN his room, examining a number of photographs that he had received that morning from Florence, when the note came to him.

He opened and read it.

It was brief and to the point.

“We have taken your spy. You will give us five hundred English pounds, and he shall be released. By Order of The Red Hand.”

He folded it carefully.

“Is the messenger still waiting?” he asked.

“No, sir,” said the servant, “it was a boy who handed it in.”

Tillizini examined the note again, and smiled. He rose from the table and went to the telephone which stood on a small bracket near the wall. He gave a Treasury number which is not in the telephone book, it is only to be found in the small volume issued to Cabinet Ministers and to public officials, and in a few seconds he was connected with Inspector Crocks.

“They have taken my man,” he said; “at least they say they have, and I suppose they are speaking the truth. They demand £500 for his immediate release.”

“What are you going to do?” asked the inspector’s voice.

“I’m going to release him,” said the other, “though I have my doubts as to whether they really want the money.”

In a few minutes they were driving to Smith’s lodgings. The landlady gave him all the information he required, and another hour’s search revealed the place where his man had been captured. As he thought, it was on the wharf from whence he usually set his make-believe flash-signals. There were signs of a little struggle. Some children, playing in the dark street from which the wharf was gained, had seen four men, very drunk as they thought, staggering to a waiting motor-car.

There is a little club in Soho where men, with certain political views, may be found between the hours of eleven at night and five in the morning.

At a quarter to twelve the stout man Pietro, who had formed the third at the Deptford conference, entered the club and, after a fruitless inspection of its members, came out again.

He walked through Soho, crossed Oxford Street, and entered one of the slummy thoroughfares which abound in the neighbourhood of Tottenham Court Road.

He let himself into a gloomy house with a key, and closed the door behind him.

His room was on the ground floor. He unlocked the door, went in, and again closed and locked it before he struck a match.

His hands were fumbling with a match-box when there was a quick, blinding flash, and he found himself standing in a circle of light thrown by an electric light.

“Don’t move,” said a voice, “or I will kill you.”

The intruder spoke in Italian.

“You may light the gas,” said the unknown.

The circle of light followed the alarmed man, as he moved to the centre of the room, reached up and ignited an incandescent burner.

“Tillizini!” he gasped.

“It is I,” said the other easily. “Your doors are shut—yes. Your windows are shuttered, of course. Sit down.”

Shaking in every limb, the man obeyed.

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