THE CONSPIRATORS.
V.
My dear Charles,—Let me remind you that the Bolshevist conspirator has to stir up conflagrations in other countries without leaving his own. Passports and things are put in to make it more difficult when he comes to getting his inflammable material and directions for use over the frontier. So he has to invent a way over the obstacles.
The first prize is awarded to the following: Secret instructions are printed in Arabic and the pages containing them are bound up in a five hundred page book in that language. The courier, an Oriental, carries this book openly in his hand when he presents himself at the frontier. It is ten to one that an innocent-looking book, thus carried, will not be suspected; a hundred to one against there being an official capable of reading it; five hundred to three against that official trying one of the guilty pages, if he is there and duly suspicious. Yet, with a hundred and sixty-six thousand chances against it, our Little Man got hold of those instructions.
The Sherlock Holmes of fiction is a gaunt figure, with a hatchet face, spare of flesh. Our Little Man is a chubby lad, standing about four foot ten in his stockinged feet, rubicund and corpulent, and he wears a mackintosh with a very mackintoshy smell in all weathers. He never did a day’s work, and he never means to try, but he is a genius at getting it out of others. Some say he is of Swiss origin, some say he is American, and some say that surely he must be Chinese; he was never certain himself until Czecho-Slovak was invented, and he plumped for that. He has the degree of Master of Arts; what arts I don’t know; probably the black ones. His inner knowledge of the human species seems to give him plenty to laugh at. He notices everything, forgets nothing, and there is never a weakness in a man but he is on to it. He made up his mind that those secret instructions were passing and set about to find how they passed and what they were. He was too lazy to begin at the beginning, so he began at the end. He called in person, as a commercial traveller, at the suspected office of destination, and in the short time available ascertained that the door-keeper who turned him out was a patriotic and fervent admirer of the wine of the country.
Our Little Man had no vulgar idea of getting the secret out of him by making him drunk. If there was a secret it wouldn’t be in the door-keeper. But he and that door-keeper got to drinking together and the door-keeper did all the paying; the drinking and the paying went on by progressive degrees till the door-keeper had no money and only a still almighty thirst left. The Little Man left him with his thirst for a few days, until it became intolerable, and the door-keeper insisted that something simply must be done about it. The Little Man regretted that he could not give the necessary money to finance further orgies, but he would gladly advance it. Four nights got the door-keeper well in his debt, and our Little Man then began to talk about repayment. The door-keeper said he had no money; the Little Man said he must get it. Off whom? His employer.
How was the door-keeper to get his employer’s money off him? By selling him a safe. Our Little Man then divulged that he was in reality a commercial traveller in safes; if the door-keeper would get his employer to buy one of his safes the Little Man would forgive him his debt by way of commission. He felt sure that the Head of the Office had a weakness for precautions. The door-keeper, now enthusiastic, said he should just think he had! The Little Man felt he was getting warm. The door-keeper put the deal through and prevailed upon his master to instal a really safe safe in the office, instead of the old one. You had only to look at it to see it was impregnable by fire, water or the King’s Enemies. But one set of keys stayed with the Little Man.
The drinking (by both) and the paying (by the door-keeper) were resumed. When the debt was again large enough the Little Man imposed new terms. This time he wanted to see the Head of the Office himself, to put further deals through. The door-keeper thought deeply, but could see no harm in this. The Little Man was thus introduced into the presence, and startled it by pointing to the safe and offering to do burglar on it any night of the week. The Head was manifestly concerned.
"We have here," said the Little Man, producing two formidable slabs of steel hinged together and leaving room between them when locked for a wad of papers only—"we have here a special strong box exactly suited for the storage of your bank-notes. Put them in this box, and the box in the safe, and then you really are ahead of your enemies."
The Head bought. He gave the Little Man less money than he had spent on the strong box, and the Little Man gave him less keys than he was entitled to. The drinking and the debt were resumed, and, when it came to a question of settlement for the third time, the Little Man pointed out to the door-keeper that, if he hadn’t the money to repay, then he must steal it. He now divulged that he was not really a broker, but a breaker of safes and strong boxes. He handed the door-keeper a key of his employer’s safe. In the safe would be found the strong box. In the strong box would be found some notes of high value, unless he was very much mistaken.
So the door-keeper went and opened the safe and returned. And the Little Man opened the strong box, and he was very much mistaken. There was never a note there; just half-a-dozen pages torn out of a book printed in Arabic.
He was so angry that he gave the strong box one on the lid for itself, with the result that he couldn’t lock it again. However, he said he had a friend who could lock or unlock anything, and he left the door-keeper drinking, for the first time at the Little Man’s expense, while he took off the box to be repaired by his friend. The latter happened to be in the next room with a camera. The pages were photographed; the Little Man returned to the door-keeper with the strong box, now capable of being re-locked; the door-keeper returned to the office and put back the strong box, locked, into the safe, which he also locked, and was wiping the sweat off his forehead and congratulating himself that no one was the worse, when he was startled to find a policeman had been watching him all the time.
But he proved to be a very amenable policeman. He said he would take no action before he and the door-keeper had had time to talk it over next day. By the time that talk came the photographs had been developed, printed and translated. But the policeman did not wish to bore the door-keeper with the tiresome details. To put it quite shortly the policeman thought it was a most excellent crime, worthy of repetition at intervals.
Yours ever, Henry.
(To be continued.)
