MAX CARRADOS MYSTERIES - Complete Series in One Volume. Bramah Ernest

Criminal at the wicket. If Law makes a mistake—sends down a loose ball or drops a catch—the Criminal scores a little or has another lease of life. But if he makes a mistake—if he lets a straight ball pass or spoons towards a steady man—he is done for. His mistakes are fatal; those of the Law are only temporary and retrievable.”

      “Very good, sir,” said Mr Beedel, rising—the conversation had taken place in the study at The Turrets, where Beedel had found occasion to present himself—“very apt indeed. I must remember that. Well, sir, I only hope that this ‘Guido the Razor’ lot will send a catch in our direction.”

      The ‘this’ delicately marked Inspector Beedel’s instinctive contempt for Guido. As a craftsman he was compelled, on his reputation, to respect him, and he had accordingly availed himself of Carrados’s friendship for a confabulation. As a man—he was a foreigner: worse, an Italian, and if left to his own resources the inspector would have opposed to his sinuous flexibility those rigid, essentially Britannia-metal, methods of the Force that strike the impartial observer as so ponderous, so amateurish and conventional, and, it must be admitted, often so curiously and inexplicably successful.

      The offence that had circuitously brought “il Rasojo” and his “lot” within the cognizance of Scotland Yard outlines the kind of story that is discreetly hinted at by the society paragraphist of the day, politely disbelieved by the astute reader, and then at last laid indiscreetly bare in all its details by the inevitable princessly “Recollections” of a generation later. It centred round an impending royal marriage in Vienna, a certain jealous “Countess X.” (here you have the discretion of the paragrapher), and a document or two that might be relied upon (the aristocratic biographer will impartially sum up the contingencies) to play the deuce with the approaching nuptials. To procure the evidence of these papers the Countess enlisted the services of Guido, as reliable a scoundrel as she could probably have selected for the commission. To a certain point—to the abstraction of the papers, in fact—he succeeded, but it was with pursuit close upon his heels. There was that disadvantage in employing a rogue to do work that implicated roguery, for whatever moral right the Countess had to the property, her accomplice had no legal right whatever to his liberty. On half-a-dozen charges at least he could be arrested on sight in as many capitals of Europe. He slipped out of Vienna by the Nordbahn with his destination known, resourcefully stopped the express outside Czaslau and got away across to Chrudim. By this time the game and the moves were pretty well understood in more than one keenly interested quarter. Diplomacy supplemented justice and the immediate history of Guido became that of a fox hunted from covert to covert with all the familiar earths stopped against him. From Pardubitz he passed on to Glatz, reached Breslau and went down the Oder to Stettin. Out of the liberality of his employer’s advances he had ample funds to keep going, and he dropped and rejoined his accomplices as the occasion ruled. A week’s harrying found him in Copenhagen, still with no time to spare, and he missed his purpose there. He crossed to Malmo by ferry, took the connecting night train to Stockholm and the same morning sailed down the Saltsjon, ostensibly bound for Obo, intending to cross to Revel and so get back to central Europe by the less frequented routes. But in this move again luck was against him and receiving warning just in time, and by the mysterious agency that had so far protected him, he contrived to be dropped from the steamer by boat among the islands of the crowded Archipelago, made his way to Helsingfors and within forty-eight hours was back again on the Frihavnen with pursuit for the moment blinked and a breathing-time to the good.

      To appreciate the exact significance of these wanderings it is necessary to recall the conditions. Guido was not zigzagging a course about Europe in an aimless search for the picturesque, still less inspired by any love of the melodramatic. To him every step was vital, each tangent or rebound the necessary outcome of his much-badgered plans. In his pocket reposed the papers for which he had run grave risks. The price agreed upon for the service was sufficiently lavish to make the risks worth taking time after time; but in order to consummate the transaction it was necessary that the booty should be put into his employer’s hand. Half-way across Europe that employer was waiting with such patience as she could maintain, herself watched and shadowed at every step. The Countess X. was sufficiently exalted to be personally immune from the high-handed methods of her country’s secret service, but every approach to her was tapped. The problem was for Guido to earn a long enough respite to enable him to communicate his position to the Countess and for her to go or to reach him by a trusty hand. Then the whole fabric of intrigue could fall to pieces, but so far Guido had been kept successfully on the run and in the meanwhile time was pressing.

      “They lost him after the Hutola,” Beedel reported, in explaining the circumstances to Max Carrados. “Three days later they found that he’d been back again in Copenhagen but by that time he’d flown. Now they’re without a trace except the inference of these ‘Orange peach blossom’ agonies in The Times. But the Countess has gone hurriedly to Paris; and Lafayard thinks it all points to London.”

      “I suppose the Foreign Office is anxious to oblige just now?”

      “I expect so, sir,” agreed Beedel, “but, of course, my instructions don’t come from that quarter. What appeals to us is that it would be a feather in our caps—they’re still a little sore up at the Yard about Hans the Piper.”

      “Naturally,” assented Carrados. “Well, I’ll see what I can do if there is real occasion. Let me know anything, and, if you see your chance yourself, come round for a talk if you like on—to-day’s Wednesday?—I shall be in at any rate on Friday evening.”

      Without being a precisian, the blind man was usually exact in such matters. There are those who hold that an engagement must be kept at all hazard: men who would miss a death-bed message in order to keep literal faith with a beggar. Carrados took lower, if more substantial, ground. “My word,” he sometimes had occasion to remark, “is subject to contingencies, like everything else about me. If I make a promise it is conditional on nothing which seems more important arising to counteract it. That, among men of sense, is understood.” And, as it happened, something did occur on this occasion.

      He was summoned to the telephone just before dinner on Friday evening to receive a message personally. Greatorex, his secretary, had taken the call, but came in to say that the caller would give him nothing beyond his name—Brebner. The name was unknown to Carrados, but such incidents were not uncommon, and he proceeded to comply.

      “Yes,” he responded; “I am Max Carrados speaking. What is it?”

      “Oh, it is you, sir, is it? Mr Brickwill told me to get to you direct.”

      “Well, you are all right. Brickwill? Are you the British Museum?”

      “Yes. I am Brebner in the Chaldean Art Department. They are in a great stew here. We have just found out that someone has managed to get access to the Second Inner Greek Room and looted some of the cabinets there. It is all a mystery as yet.”

      “What is missing?” asked Carrados.

      “So far we can only definitely speak of about six trays of Greek coins—a hundred to a hundred and twenty, roughly.”

      “Important?”

      The line conveyed a caustic bark of tragic amusement.

      “Why, yes, I should say so. The beggar seems to have known his business. All fine specimens of the best period. Syracuse—Messana—Croton— Amphipolis. Eumenes—Evainetos—Kimons. The chief quite wept.”

      Carrados groaned. There was not a piece among them that he had not handled lovingly.

      “What are you doing?” he demanded.

      “Mr Brickwill has been to Scotland Yard, and, on advice, we are not making it public as yet. We don’t want a hint of it to be dropped anywhere, if you don’t mind, sir.”

      “That will be all right.”

      “It was for that reason that I was to speak with you personally. We are notifying the chief dealers and likely collectors to whom the coins, or some of them, may be offered at once if it is thought that we haven’t found it out yet. Judging