The Pawns Count Part 9

"Do you think you can remember now what happened when you went upstairs?"

"I reached the lavatory all right--you were with me then, weren't you?"

Graham said reflectively. "I hung up my coat while I washed, but there was no one else in the room. Then you went downstairs and I brushed my hair and just stopped to light a cigarette. You know that on the right-hand side of the landing there is a room where the musicians change. Joseph, that black devil, was standing in the doorway. He grinned as I came into sight. 'Lady wants to speak to you for a moment, Captain Graham,' he said. Well, you know how harmless the fellow looks--just a good-natured, smiling n.i.g.g.e.r. I never dreamed of anything wrong. As a matter of fact, I thought that Peggy Vincent--that's a young lady I often go to Henry's with--wanted to have a word with me before I joined our party. I stepped inside the room, and that's just about all I can remember. It must have been jolly quick. His arm shot round my neck, the door was closed, and that other brute--Ha.s.san, I think it was--held something over my face."

"But that room was searched," Lutchester reminded him.

"Well I came to just a little," Graham explained, "I found that I was in a sort of cupboard place, behind the lockers these fellows have for their clothes. It opens with a spring lock, and you'd never notice it, searching the room."

"Who was the first person you saw when you recovered consciousness?"

Graham's forehead was wrinkled in the effort to remember.

"I can't quite get hold of it," he confessed, "but I have a sort of fancy I can't altogether get rid of that there was a woman about."

Lutchester looked at the end of the cigarette he had just lit.

"A woman?" he repeated. "That's queer."

"I can't remember anything definitely until I woke up in that chapel,"

Graham continued, "but when they searched me and found that the pocketbook had gone, Fischer, the big American, muttered some woman's name. I was queer just at the moment, but it sounded very much to me like Miss Van Teyl's. He rang her up on the telephone."

"Did they suspect Miss Van Teyl, then, of having taken your pocketbook?"

Graham shook his head.

"I lost the drift of things just then," he admitted. "She couldn't have done, in any case. Forgive me, but aren't we wasting time, Mr.

Lutchester? We must do something. Couldn't you ring up Scotland Yard now?"

"I certainly could," Lutchester a.s.sented, "but, as I told you just now, I don't think that I will."

Graham stared at him.

"But why not?"

"For certain very definite reasons with which you needn't trouble yourself just now," Lutchester p.r.o.nounced. "The formula has gone, without a doubt, but it certainly isn't in the hands of any of the people at Henry's."

"But there's that American fellow--Fischer!" Graham exclaimed. "He was the ringleader!"

"Just so," Lutchester murmured thoughtfully. "However, he hasn't got the formula."

"But he planned the attack upon me," Graham protested. "He is an enemy--a German--sheltering himself under his American naturalization.

Surely we're going for him?"

"He's a wrong 'un, of course," Lutchester admitted, "but he hasn't got the formula."

"But we must do something!" Graham continued, his anger rising as his strength returned. "Why, the place is a perfect den of conspirators! I expect Ferrani himself is in it, and there's that other maitre d'hotel, Jules, and those black beasts, Joseph and Ha.s.san, besides Fischer. My G.o.d, they shall pay for this!"

Lutchester nodded.

"I dare say they will," he admitted, "but not quite in the way you are thinking of."

Graham half rose to his feet.

"Look here," he said, "I'm sane enough now, aren't I, and in my proper senses? You are not going to suggest that we don't turn the police on to that d.a.m.ned place?"

"I certainly am," was the brief reply.

Graham was aghast.

"What do you mean to do, then?"

"Leave them alone for the present. Not one of them has the formula. Not one of them even knows where it is."

"But the attack upon me?"

"You asked for all you got," Lutchester told him curtly, "and perhaps a little more."

The first tinge of colour came back to Graham's cheeks. His eyes flashed with anger.

"Perhaps I did," he admitted, "but that doesn't alter the fact that I'm going to have some of my own back out of them."

Lutchester crossed his legs and turned round in his chair. For the first time he directly faced his visitor. His tone, though not unkindly, was imperative.

"Young fellow," he said, "you'll have to listen to me about this."

A smouldering sense of revolt suddenly found words.

"Listen to you? What the devil have you got to do with it?" Graham demanded.

"I hate to remind any one of an obligation," Lutchester answered, "but I am under the impression that, together with Miss Van Teyl, of course, I rescued you from an exceedingly inconvenient situation."

"I haven't had time yet to tell you how grateful I am," Graham said awkwardly. "You were a brick, of course, and how you and Miss Van Teyl tumbled on to the whole thing I can't imagine. But I don't understand what you're getting at now. You can't suggest that I am to leave these fellows alone and not give information to the police?"

"The character of the place," Lutchester a.s.sured him, "is already perfectly well known to the heads of the police. The matter will be dealt with, but not in the way you suggest. And so far as regards Fischer, I do not wish him interfered with for the present."

"You do not wish him interfered with?" Graham repeated. "Where the devil do you come in at all?"

"You can leave me out of the matter for the present. You want the formula back, don't you?"

"My G.o.d, yes!" Graham muttered fervently. "It's all very well to give one a pencil and a piece of paper and say 'Write it out,' but there are calculations and proportions--"

"Precisely," Lutchester interrupted. "You want it back again. Why not let Fischer do the business? He has an idea where it's gone. The thing to do seems to me to follow him."

"To follow Fischer?" Graham repeated vaguely.

"Precisely. If he thinks the formula is in England, Fischer will stay in England. If he thinks that it has gone abroad he will go abroad. If we leave him free we can watch which he does."

Graham swallowed half a winegla.s.sful of the brandy by his side. Then he leaned forward.