"There's two gentlemen to see you, Mr Amena." The door opened, and his landlady's dirty little daughter put her towsled head through the little space behind the doorpost. "They're down below; shall I send 'em up?"
"Certainly, Jane. Tell the gentlemen that I shall be pleased to see them."
The dirty face vanished as the door closed. Phadrig shut down the top of the big escritoire and locked it. Heavy treads sounded on the rickety stairs. There was a shuffle of feet on the little landing, a sharp knock at the door, and he said in a low tone:
"Come in, gentlemen. I have been expecting you."
The door opened and Nicol Hendry entered, followed by his German colleague. Practised as they were in all the arts of their profession, they looked about the mean, miserably appointed room with curious eyes. Phadrig, dressed in the same shabby semi-Oriental costume in which he had received Isaac Josephus, salaamed, and said:
"Gentlemen, although this is but a poor room to receive you in, I am pleased that you have come. You are officers of the International, if I am not mistaken."
Then his speech changed to German, and he went on:
"You, sir, are M. Nicol Hendry, and your friend is the Herr von Hamner, Chief of the Berlin Section. What can I do to serve you?"
It was anything but the greeting that they expected. They thought that they had tracked the real criminal to his last hiding-place. They had established the identity between Phadrig, the poor seller of curios, and Phadrig Amena, the worker of miracles, whom all the smart set in London was talking about; and here he was in this miserable, shabby room, dressed in clothes that no pawnbroker would advance a couple of shillings on, smiling and bowing before them as though they were lords of the earth, and he—the man who had sent three men and a woman to their deaths by, as it were, a mere word of command—a worm beneath their feet. Nicol Hendry managed to keep his self-possession, but Von Hamner was already sorry that he had come, and his face showed it.
"We have come to ask you, Mr Amena," said Hendry, thinking it best to come to the point at once, "why you found it necessary to kill those people. I needn't mention names. You know them as well as we do."