“Won’t you sit down?” I said, rather foolishly.
The little Japanese man bowed politely and took the chair.
I had no idea what to say. My mind was in complete confusion. I wanted to laugh. I wanted to call Van Adams back. But more than anything, I was annoyed.
So this neat, ordinary-looking little Japanese was the millionaire’s “familiar spirit”?
He was supposed to be unique?
I cursed myself for bringing such a strange man into my work at the very beginning.
Still, as I sat opposite him, I thought irritably that I could easily send him off on some wild-goose chase.
I had never been so annoyed in my life.
And exactly sixty seconds later, my annoyance disappeared.
Without the slightest embarrassment, and without wasting a moment on small talk, Mr. Danjuro went straight to business.
His voice was quiet and clear. He had no accent at all, although his English was slightly formal and scholarly. He spoke in a calm, emotionless way, almost like a gramophone.
“I completely agree with you, Sir John. The mystery surrounding this terrible affair will not be solved in the United States. It will be solved here, in England.”
“But I never said—”
He gave me a faint, almost tired smile.
“And now that I have the honour of working with you, I hope you will allow me to suggest a plan of investigation.”
“I was going to try to work one out tonight.”
“It will be my privilege to assist you. During the last thirty years I have come into contact with many clever and dangerous criminals. But this case has the unmistakable mark of a master criminal. It will be a pleasure to hunt him down.”
He paused.
“May I smoke?”
He took a small square of rice paper and some tobacco from his pocket. With one hand, he rolled a cigarette on his knee with the effortless skill of a magician.
He had not raised his voice, but there was a sudden flash in his narrow black eyes. For an instant, something fierce and dangerous seemed to lie beneath his calm expression.
He continued.
“From everything I have learned—and I have spoken at length with Captain Pring, Mr. Rickaby, and the passengers of the Albatros—we must look for a man who satisfies three conditions.”
He raised one finger.
“First, he must be an aviator of the highest class.”
A second finger appeared.
“Second, he must be an inventor and mechanical genius, or at least have access to someone with those abilities.”
Then a third.
“Third, he must possess considerable wealth, or have some reliable way of obtaining money.”
“I follow you completely,” I said.
The deductions were obvious from everything we already knew.
“I am glad. Now we must consider the man himself. I believe he is educated and has once occupied a respectable position in society. At the same time, he is desperate in his circumstances and regards material pleasure as the highest good.”
“Rickaby said the men who boarded the Albatros spoke like educated men.”
“Exactly. Our search is already becoming narrower.”
He took another slow puff of his cigarette.
“Am I correct in saying that every aviator in this country must pass an examination and obtain a licence before he is permitted to fly?”
“Yes. Professional or amateur, every aviator must have a licence from the Air Police. All the licences are registered.”
“I have already had the records for the last ten years searched at Whitehall.”
“And?”
“Nothing.”
“There is no man among them who could possibly be our criminal.”
“That was an excellent idea, Sir John, if I may say so. But I believe we must go much further back than ten years.”
He leaned back slightly.
“Now we come to the pirate aircraft itself and one of its most remarkable features—the complete silence of its engines.”
“I know. Engine designers have been working on that problem for years.”
“With very little success.”
“Exactly. The problem has never been solved.”
“Except by our unknown friends.”
He smiled faintly.
“I have examined all the recent patents concerning engine silencers at your Patent Office. I spent yesterday morning there. I found nothing.”
He looked at me.
“The meaning is obvious. Any ordinary inventor who had discovered a device of such importance would have patented it immediately. Therefore we can safely assume that no ordinary engineering company in this country has developed a complete silencer.”
“You mean the field of possibilities becomes even smaller?”
“Precisely.”
He folded his hands.
“We are looking for a man of the character we have already described. Since he has clearly built silent engines, he must have done the work in secret. He must have had private engineering facilities where at least the essential parts of his machines could be manufactured.”
He paused.
“The question is where.”
“On the Continent?”
“I do not think so. He would be watched much more closely there than in England.”
“America?”
“Even less likely.”
“So England.”
“Yes. Let us assume England. If that is correct, then there is another obvious conclusion. This man and his associates—we know he has associates—would build their pirate aircraft as close as possible to the place from which they intended to operate.”
He looked directly at me.
“And that base must be somewhere on the coast, does it not?”
“Of course. That is what anyone would assume.”
I sighed.
“And yet it seems impossible. The entire English coastline is patrolled by the coastguards. England is practically no larger than a pocket-handkerchief.”
I began to speak more quickly.
“I considered Scotland and the Northern Isles. I considered the remote parts of the Irish coast. For the last two days I have had a fleet of airships surveying and photographing those regions.”
I shook my head.
“Not a single hangar larger than a motor shed could have escaped them. Scotland Yard has questioned every village policeman along the coast.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”
I spoke with some passion because I could feel the frustration behind every word.
The sense of helplessness was maddening.
Danjuro calmly rolled another cigarette.
At that moment, the door opened and Thumbwood entered.
“I delivered your note, Sir John. The editor sends his compliments and thanks.”
“Charles,” I said, “this gentleman is Mr. Danjuro. He is going to help us.”
I hesitated.
Describing Danjuro was surprisingly difficult.
“He is one of the greatest detectives in the world.”
Thumbwood immediately raised his hand to his forehead in the salute of a stable boy.
Then he looked directly at Danjuro and suddenly stopped.
“I saw you this morning, sir.”
Danjuro smiled.
“You were talking to old Mrs. Jessop, the dresser at the Parthenon Theatre. It was in the Blue Dragon, just around the corner from the stage door.”
“And you were with the stage-door keeper,” Danjuro replied calmly. “A curious coincidence.”
I gave Thumbwood a look.
Looking thoroughly puzzled, he left the room.
“I spent part of this morning at the Parthenon Theatre, Sir John,” Danjuro explained. “Apparently your servant had the same idea.”
He gave a faint smile.
“A young man of considerable intelligence, I would say.”
Then he continued.
“Now that we have removed a few preliminary obstacles, we have reached a matter which I consider extremely important.”
He looked at me.
“You are engaged to Miss Constance Shepherd, a young woman of considerable beauty and fame.”
Confound the man. He spoke of Connie as if she were a specimen under examination.
“That is correct,” I said.
“She was kidnapped by the unknown aviator.”
He spoke with complete calm.
“Among all the passengers, she and her maid were deliberately singled out.”
He paused.
“That fact is the key to the entire matter.”
I waited.
“Was she kidnapped for ransom? I understand that suggestion has appeared in the newspapers.”
He shook his head.
“No.”
“First, it would have been an unnecessarily dangerous plan. An attempt to obtain a ransom would almost certainly have led to discovery.”
“Second, there were much more profitable targets aboard the aircraft.”
He counted them off almost casually.
“The Duke of Perth, for example. Or the cinema actor who earns sixty thousand pounds a year.”
He looked at me.
“It is extremely unlikely that, during the confusion of the attack on the Albatros, the pirate leader suddenly noticed a pretty face and decided to take her.”
“We know from the passengers’ accounts that Miss Shepherd was deliberately sought out.”
He tapped his cigarette.
“That tells us with certainty that the pirate already knew she was aboard and intended to capture her.”
My heart began to pound.
“That means they had met before.”
He nodded.
“And, undoubtedly, she had rejected him.”
I stared at him.
“That is why I questioned the theatre dresser this morning.”
For the first and last time, I managed to astonish Mr. Danjuro.
I suddenly jumped up from my chair. I may even have shouted like a madman.
Thumbwood rushed back into the room before I could say another word.
Something had suddenly flashed through my mind, bright and violent as an electric sign appearing in the darkness.
Something I had completely forgotten.
“There was a man,” I gasped.
“A scoundrel who had been bothering Miss Shepherd for a long time.”
“He wanted to marry her. She told me about him.”
I stared at Danjuro.
“And he was once a famous flying man!”
“During the Great War,” Danjuro said calmly.
“Major Helzephron, V.C.”
He looked at me.
“I already knew that.”
“And one of the worst men you could ever meet, sir!” Thumbwood burst out. “Warned off every racecourse in the country. I’ve found out a thing or two myself!”
I stared at them, trembling with excitement.
Then reality hit me like a bucket of cold water.
Of course it was impossible.
It had to be a coincidence.
The first aircraft, the Albatros, had been attacked while Helzephron was in London.
He had travelled west on the same train as Connie and me.
It could not possibly be him.
“Tell me exactly what you know, Sir John.”
I told Danjuro everything that had happened at Paddington and exactly what Connie herself had told me.
He listened without interrupting.
When I finished, a small leather notebook had somehow appeared in his hands. Everything this man did had the strange quality of a magician’s trick.
He slowly turned through the pages.
“So far,” he said, “we have been eliminating impossibilities, or possibilities so unlikely that they can practically be treated as impossible.”
He looked up.
“That has left us with a small collection of facts. They are not proved, but they are enough to work from.”
He paused.
“One thing is becoming clear. The character of our unknown enemy.”
“He must be very much like the man we have imagined.”
“A certain Major Helzephron has now appeared on the scene.”
He looked toward Thumbwood.
“Let us see whether his character matches the one we have deduced.”
“Mr. Thumbwood has gathered some information. So have I.”
He smiled slightly.
“Let us compare our results.”
Thumbwood suddenly looked embarrassed.
“Come on, Charles,” I said. “You have done very well. Tell him what you found.”
“Well, Sir John, I discovered that the gentleman is a pretty bad sort, judging by the company he keeps.”
He rubbed the back of his neck.
“He used to bother Miss Shepherd terribly. He would wait outside the stage door and try to speak to her when she got into her car after the performance.”
“He was always leaving notes and flowers with the stage-door keeper.”
“Miss Shepherd never accepted any of them. She always sent them back from her room.”
“It got so bad that she finally complained to the stage manager. One night, the manager had a plain-clothes policeman from Vine Street waiting there.”
“Major Helzephron was given a very clear warning.”
Thumbwood lowered his voice.
“He could get pretty nasty sometimes. Once or twice he was completely drunk.”
“And Mr. Meggit, the commission agent, knows him well. The Major has done a lot of gambling and horse racing in his time.”
“There has never been any open scandal, but he knows how to manipulate the betting market. The better bookmakers won’t even give him proper odds anymore.”
I shrugged.
It was exactly what I would have expected.
Helzephron seemed to be just another wealthy, disreputable man who spent his time in the worst parts of London’s West End.
There were dozens like him.
If anything, these facts seemed to prove that he could not possibly be connected with the Atlantic crimes.
“You see?” I said to Danjuro, certain that he would understand my point.
Then I thanked Charles, and Thumbwood left the room.
“That is only the surface,” Danjuro said.
“I questioned a woman who was constantly in attendance on Miss Shepherd. From her, I learned exactly what your servant has discovered.”
“But I went deeper.”
“This is a case of genuine, overwhelming passion on the man’s part. Nothing less.”
He looked thoughtful.
“He is also at a dangerous age for such a passion. Certainly over forty-five.”
“A woman can recognize such things.”
“But that is not all.”
“So far, we have learned nothing important.”
I was becoming restless.
I wanted to do something.
Anything.
Yet what could I do?
Even if I had spent the entire night thinking alone, I could hardly have understood the situation more clearly than I did now.
And as I looked at the little Japanese man sitting almost swallowed up in the enormous armchair, I felt ashamed of my irritation.
His mind seemed to be packed with ice.
It was a perfect machine of logic.
I could not expect warmth or sympathy from such a man.
But at that moment, I desperately wanted some.
Hadn’t I lost the one thing that made life worth living?
What might be happening to Connie at that very moment?
Damn him.
He seemed to read my thoughts like an open book.
“I understand what you are feeling, Sir John,” he said quietly.
“But I must follow my own method.”
“We have not even been talking for an hour.”
He paused.
“And if it gives you any comfort, let me tell you this: it is essential that we leave London tonight.”
“My nerves are stretched to breaking point.”
I looked at him.
“Please go on. I can hardly tell you what a blessing your arrival has been.”
“In my work as Mr. Van Adams’s agent and personal guard, I have always needed to maintain contact with a certain circle of people.”
“The aristocracy of international crime, you might say.”
“It has proved useful.”
“After visiting the Parthenon this morning, I called upon an old acquaintance.”
“The Honourable James Brookfield.”
“Lord Slidon’s son?”
“The man who received five years in prison?”
“Yes.”
“Everyone knows his name.”
He smiled faintly.
“He made one small mistake.”
“Mr. Brookfield is extremely intelligent and an excellent judge of character. He cannot understand decent people with normal morals or instincts.”
“But when it comes to criminals, his judgment is almost infallible.”
“He owes me a small favour, and I added a note for fifty pounds to my request for information.”
“And what did you learn?”
“That Major Helzephron is exactly the man we have just been discussing.”
“But he is much more dangerous and formidable than anyone suspects.”
Danjuro’s expression remained calm.
“He possesses considerable intellectual ability.”
“Beneath his crude pleasures and fast life in London and Paris, there is something burning inside him like a coal.”
“His appearances in London are irregular. He comes and goes.”
“But Brookfield is certain of one thing.”
“His real life is lived far away from the cities.”
He looked at me.
“And that life has a purpose.”
Something changed in Mr. Danjuro.
Quite suddenly, unexpectedly, he began to reveal what was really inside him.
His last words had been spoken in a completely different voice.
The flat monotone was gone.
His words seemed to vibrate through the room.
I felt a sudden thrill.
It was the force of a powerful personality.
From that moment onward, I was completely committed to this strange thinking machine that Fate had sent me.
I tried to imitate his cold, scientific way of thinking.
“It is strange,” I said, “that a man with a genuine intellect would spend part of his time behaving like a drunken rake in London’s low clubs, gambling rooms, and around theatre stage doors.”
“It happens, of course, but it is unusual.”
“You have immediately identified what appears to be a weakness in my theory of his character.”
“But let us assume he did all that for a deeper reason.”
“Ah.”
He knew—or suspected—something more.
He opened his notebook.
“Two years ago, a young man named Herbert Gascoigne was expelled from Christ Church College, Oxford.”
“We call it being sent down.”
I nodded.
“But continue.”
“The case was serious. Gascoigne had established a private gambling club and ruined several of his fellow students.”
“Eventually it was discovered that he had been using a rigged roulette wheel.”
“He came to London and fell in with one of the worst groups of professional swindlers.”
“Major Helzephron met him.”
“The two became very close.”
“The younger man was clearly under the older man’s influence.”
“Then, eventually, Gascoigne abandoned his old friends and disappeared.”
I began to understand.
“Brookfield has seen exactly the same thing happen several times.”
“A young man from a respectable upper-class family gets into serious trouble and is ruined socially.”
“Then our mysterious Major takes an interest in him.”
“He is seen with the young man. He becomes his companion.”
“And eventually the young man disappears.”
“It isn’t charity,” I said.
“No.”
“And that leads to some very interesting conclusions.”
Danjuro’s eyes remained fixed on me.
“Where could a criminal with the ambition of Napoleon, patiently planning some enormous crime, find better recruits than among desperate and ruined young men from his own social class?”
“The idea itself shows genius.”
“They speak his language. He understands how they think.”
“They share the same background.”
“There are a thousand connections between them.”
“I can imagine no more powerful or dangerous combination.”
“These desperate young men have been rejected by respectable society. The one virtue they may still possess is loyalty to the man who gives them a purpose.”
“If society has cast them out, they may decide to make war on society.”
“Give them a leader like Major Helzephron.”
“Give that leader a plan bold enough to capture their imagination.”
“And suddenly everything becomes clear.”
He paused.
“And if this man had not developed an overwhelming passion for Miss Shepherd, we might never have found his trail.”
I could barely control my thoughts.
We seemed infinitely closer to the truth than we had been an hour before.
One idea suddenly became clear to me.
“Exactly.”
“And isn’t it actually to our advantage that we—and only we—are in a position to connect Helzephron with the piracy?”
“He will believe himself completely safe.”
“I do not believe for a moment that anyone besides ourselves has the slightest suspicion of him,” Danjuro replied firmly.
“He will have taken extraordinary care to hide his tracks.”
“Nothing I learned from my interviews would have aroused suspicion.”
“Brookfield thinks I wanted the information for an entirely different reason.”
He closed his notebook.
“Yes, Sir John. We have an extremely difficult and dangerous task ahead of us.”
“You must understand that completely.”
“My sincere opinion is that it would be safer to step into a cage full of cobras than to go where we are going.”
He took out his watch.
“But it is five o’clock.”
He looked at me.
“Let us say the game begins now.”
He smiled.
“We have scored the first point.”
Suddenly he slipped out of the chair in one smooth, almost snake-like movement.
The moment he stood, he seemed to become a completely different man.
The mild, modern expression vanished from his face.
His features became frightening.
His eyes narrowed into thin slits of light.
His square jaw thrust forward.
His grey lips curled into the grin of a tiger.
His slender body seemed to expand with hard, iron strength, like a wrestler stripped for combat.
Have you ever seen the old Japanese colour prints showing the ancient Samurai, or those terrifying warriors of the past screaming at their enemies?
That terrible stillness.
That absolute lack of emotion.
That pure, concentrated hatred.
If you have, then you can begin to understand what I saw standing before me.
Good heavens!
Millionaire Van Adams certainly knew how to choose his servants.