The Clue of the Twisted Candles | Page 8

to the ears in a big top coat, standing before the dying fire. He started as Kara entered and at a signal followed him from the room.
The stranger was obviously not English. His face was sallow and peaked, his cheeks were hollow, and the beard he wore was irregular-almost unkempt.
Kara led the way to the end of the dark platform, before he spoke.
"You have carried out my instructions?" he asked brusquely.
The language he spoke was Arabic, and the other answered him in that language.
"Everything that you have ordered has been done, Effendi," he said humbly.
"You have a revolver?"
The man nodded and patted his pocket.
"Loaded?"
"Excellency," asked the other, in surprise, "what is the use of a revolver, if it is not loaded?"
"You understand, you are not to shoot this man," said Kara. "You are merely to present the pistol. To make sure, you had better unload it now."
Wonderingly the man obeyed, and clicked back the ejector.
"I will take the cartridges," said Kara, holding out his hand.
He slipped the little cylinders into his pocket, and after examining the weapon returned it to its owner.
"You will threaten him," he went on. "Present the revolver straight at his heart. You need do nothing else."
The man shuffled uneasily.
"I will do as you say, Effendi," he said. "But - "
"There are no 'buts,' " replied the other harshly. "You are to carry out my instructions without any question. What will happen then you shall see. I shall be at hand. That I have a reason for this play be assured."
"But suppose he shoots?" persisted the other uneasily.
"He will not shoot," said Kara easily. "Besides, his revolver is not loaded. Now you may go. You have a long walk before you. You know the way?"
The man nodded.
"I have been over it before," he said confidently.
Kara returned to the big limousine which had drawn up some distance from the station. He spoke a word or two to the chauffeur in Greek, and the man touched his hat.
CHAPTER II
Assistant Commissioner of Police T. X. Meredith did not occupy offices in New Scotland Yard. It is the peculiarity of public offices that they are planned with the idea of supplying the margin of space above all requirements and that on their completion they are found wholly inadequate to house the various departments which mysteriously come into progress coincident with the building operations.
"T. X.," as he was known by the police forces of the world, had a big suite of offices in Whitehall. The house was an old one facing the Board of Trade and the inscription on the ancient door told passers-by that this was the "Public Prosecutor, Special Branch."
The duties of T. X. were multifarious. People said of him - and like most public gossip, this was probably untrue - that he was the head of the "illegal" department of Scotland Yard. If by chance you lost the keys of your safe, T. X. could supply you (so popular rumour ran) with a burglar who would open that safe in half an hour.
If there dwelt in England a notorious individual against whom the police could collect no scintilla of evidence to justify a prosecution, and if it was necessary for the good of the community that that person should be deported, it was T. X. who arrested the obnoxious person, hustled him into a cab and did not loose his hold upon his victim until he had landed him on the indignant shores of an otherwise friendly power.
It is very certain that when the minister of a tiny power which shall be nameless was suddenly recalled by his government and brought to trial in his native land for putting into circulation spurious bonds, it was somebody from the department which T. X. controlled, who burgled His Excellency's house, burnt the locks from his safe and secured the necessary incriminating evidence.
I say it is fairly certain and here I am merely voicing the opinion of very knowledgeable people indeed, heads of public departments who speak behind their hands, mysterious under-secretaries of state who discuss things in whispers in the remote corners of their clubrooms and the more frank views of American correspondents who had no hesitation in putting those views into print for the benefit of their readers.
That T. X. had a more legitimate occupation we know, for it was that flippant man whose outrageous comment on the Home Office Administration is popularly supposed to have sent one Home Secretary to his grave, who traced the Deptford murderers through a labyrinth of perjury and who brought to book Sir Julius Waglite though he had covered his trail of defalcation through the balance sheets of thirty-four companies.
On the night of March 3rd, T. X. sat in his inner office interviewing a disconsolate inspector of metropolitan police, named Mansus.
In appearance T. X.