The whole adventure mystified and bewildered me. It was a mystery which, however, before long, was to be increased a hundredfold. Alas!

that I should sit here and put down my guilt upon paper!

CHAPTER III

THE MAN WITH THE HUMP

One morning I called at Rayne's luxurious chambers in Half Moon Street, when he expressed himself most delighted at the result of our visit to Paris.

"I want you to-morrow morning to drive Lola and Madame up to Overstow," he said. "Better start early. Call for them at the hotel at nine o'clock. The roads are good, so you'll have a pleasant journey.

I'll get home by train at the end of the week."

At this I was very pleased, for Lola with her great dark eyes always sat beside me. She could drive quite well, and was full of good humor and a charming little gossip. Hence I looked forward to a very pleasant run. The more I saw of the master-crook's daughter the more attracted I became by her. Indeed, though she seemed to regard me with some suspicion--why, I don't know--we had already become excellent friends.

The month of September pa.s.sed.

We had all spent a delightful time at Overstow. Rayne had given two big shoots at which several well-known Yorkshire landowners had been present, while I had taken a gun, and Lola, Madame and several other ladies had walked with us. Lola and I were frequently together, and I often accompanied her on long walks through the autumn-tinted woods.

Madame's husband had only spent a week with us, for he had, I understood, been called to Switzerland on "business"--the nature of which I could easily guess.

At the end of the month we were back in London again.

One evening I had dined at the Carlton with Lola, her father and Madame, and the two ladies having gone off to the theater, he took me round to the set of luxurious chambers he occupied in Half Moon Street.

When we were alone together with our cigars, he suddenly said:

"I want you to go out for a run to-night--to Bristol."

"To Bristol! To-night?" I echoed.

"Yes. I want you to take the new 'A. C.' and get to the Clifton Suspension Bridge by two o'clock to-morrow morning. There, in the center of the bridge, you will await a stranger--an elderly hunchback whose name is Morley Tarrant. He'll give you, as _bona fides_, the word 'Mask.' When you meet him act upon his instructions. He is to be trusted."

The tryst seemed full of suspicion, and I certainly did not like it.

The evening was bright and clear, and the run in the fast two-seater would be enjoyable. But to meet a man who would give a pa.s.sword savored too much of crookdom.

He quickly saw my hesitation, and added:

"Now, Hargreave, I ought not to conceal from you the fact that there may be a trap. If so, you must evade it and escape at all costs. I have enemies, you know--pretty fierce ones."

Again, for the hundredth time, I debated within myself whether I dare cast myself adrift from the round-faced, prosperous-looking cosmopolitan who sat before me so full of good humor and so fearless.

I had been cleverly inveigled into accepting the situation he had offered me, but I had never dreamed that by accepting, I was throwing in my lot with the most marvelously organized gang of evil-doers that that world had ever known.

Other similar gangs blundered at one time or another and left loopholes through which the police were able to attack them and break them up. But Rudolph Rayne had flung his octopus-like tentacles so far afield that he had actually attached to him--by fear of blackmail--an eminent Counsel who appeared for the defense of any member of the circle who happened to make a slip. That well-known member of the Bar I will call Mr. Henry Moyser, a lawyer whose fame was of world-wide repute, and who was employed for the defense in most of the really great criminal trials.

I sat astounded when, by a side-wind, I was told that Mr. Moyser would defend me if I were unlucky enough to be arrested. Certainly his very name was sufficient to secure an acquittal.

The journey from Pall Mall to Clifton had been a long and rather tiring one, and as I sat in the swift two-seater half-way across the high suspension bridge, I smoked reflectively as I gazed away along the river where deep below shone a few twinkling lights. Across at Clifton I could see the row of street lamps, while above the stars were shining in the sharp frosty air, and in the distance I could hear the roar of an express train.

The bell of Clifton parish church struck the half-hour, but n.o.body was in sight, and there were no sounds of footsteps in the frosty air.

Though so near the busy city of Bristol, yet high up on that long bridge, that triumph of engineering of our yesterday, all was quiet with scarce a sound save the shrill cry of a night-bird.

If it were not that I loved Lola I would gladly have resigned the position which had already become hateful to me. Somehow I felt vaguely that perhaps I might one day render her a service. I might even extricate her from the dangerous circ.u.mstances in which she was living in all innocence of the actual conspiracies in which her father was engaged. Who could know?

As far as I could gather, Lola was much puzzled at certain secret meetings held at Overstow. Her father's friends of both s.e.xes were shrouded in mystery, and she was, I knew, seeking to penetrate it and learn the truth.

I had already satisfied myself that the gang was a most dangerous and unscrupulous one, and that Rayne and his friends would hesitate at nothing so long as they carried out the plans which they laid with such innate cunning in order to effect great and astounding _coups_--the clever thefts and swindles that from time to time had held the world aghast.

I suppose I must have waited nearly half an hour when suddenly there fell upon my ear uneven footsteps hurrying along towards the car, and in the light of the street lamp I distinguished, hurrying towards me, a short, elderly man, somewhat deformed, with a distinct hump on his back.

"You're Mr. Hargreave, aren't you?" he inquired breathlessly, with a distinct Scottish accent. "I'm Tarrant! I'm so sorry I'm late, but Rudolph will understand. I'll explain it to him."

And he was about to mount into the seat beside me.

I put out my arm, and peering into the man's face, asked:

"Is there nothing else, eh?"

"Nothing," he replied. "Why? You are here to meet me. Rudolph sent you down from London."

I was awaiting the prearranged word that would show the hunchback's _bona fides_.

I gave him another opportunity of giving the pa.s.sword, but he seemed ignorant of it.

Next second, my suspicions being aroused, I sprang down, and crying:

"Look here, old fellow! I fancy you've made a mistake!" I struck him familiarly upon the back.

His hump was _soft_! In that instant I detected him as an impostor--a Scotland Yard detective--without a doubt!

Fortunately for me my brain acts quickly. But it was not so quick as his. He gave a shrill whistle, and in a flash from nowhere three of his colleagues appeared. They ran around the car to hold it up.

For a few seconds I found myself in serious jeopardy.

I sprang into the driver's seat, switched on the self-starter, and just as one of the detectives tried to mount beside me, I threw down among my a.s.sailants a little dark brown bomb the shape of an egg, with which Rayne had provided me in case of emergency.

It exploded with a low fizz and its fumes took them aback, allowing me to shoot away over the bridge and down into Bristol, much wiser than when I had arrived.

The arrangement of that pa.s.sword in itself showed how cleverly Rudolph Rayne was foresighted in all his plans. He always left a loophole for escape. Surely he was a past-master in the art of criminality, for his fertile brain evolved schemes and exit channels which n.o.body ever dreamed of.

The squire of Overstow, who was regarded by the wealthy county people of Yorkshire as perfectly honest in all his dealings, and unduly rich withal, attracted to his table some of the most exclusive hunting set, people with t.i.tles, as well as the _parvenus_ "impossibles" who had bought huge places with the money made out of the war. The "County"

never dreamed of the mysterious source of Rudolph Rayne's unlimited income.

After traveling through a number of deserted streets in Bristol, I at last found myself upon a high road with a signpost which told me that I was on my way to Wells, that picturesque little city at the foot of the Mendip Hills. So, fearing lest I might be followed, I went "all out" through Axbridge and Cheddar, until at last I came to the fine old cathedral at Wells, which I knew quite familiarly. Near it was the Swan Hotel, at which, after some difficulty, I aroused the "boots,"

secured a room, and placed the car in the garage.