Tom Tiddler's Island, стр. 56
Colin, having gained on the down-slope, was well ahead of Northfleet when he reached level ground. Without waiting for his companion, he dashed off towards the Heather Lodge lights, and in a minute or two he reached the boundary wall. Abruptly, from a little ahead of him broke out the harsh wail of a Klaxon horn, rising far above the noises of wind and rain. Then he felt his ankle catch on something; he tripped, failed to recover, and came down heavily on his face as a brilliant flare illumined the ground about him. As it died away he heard Natorp’s voice :
“Hands up!”
Something in the tone kept Colin from protest. He scrambled to his feet and held his hands above his head. His ear caught the noise of quick steps behind the wall. Evidently the Klaxon had called up reinforcements for the guard at the gate.
“Who are you?” demanded Natorp sharply. “No funny business now.”
“Trent, of Wester Voe. There’s another man with me. I must see Mr. Leven or Mr. Arrow, or whatever he calls himself. At once. His niece is in the hands of a lot of scoundrels at Wester Voe. Hurry, mail. Don’t waste time.”
“Come ten steps forward,” Natorp ordered impassively. “Keep your hands up.”
Colin had the sense to see that protest was useless. He began to advance as directed.
“The other man keep back,” Natorp added in a loud voice.
As he came up, Colin could see very dimly the outline of Natorp’s figure in the gloom. Then a pistol-barrel was thrust against his head and he was hustled unceremoniously through the gate by a second man. A flash-light dazzled him for a moment as his captor examined him.
“Ziss is all right,” a second voice announced.
Colin gathered that he was in the hands of Zelensky.
“Now you—the other man—you come forward with hands up,” Natorp directed. “Mind the trip-wire,” he added considerately.
In his turn Northfleet was brought inside the garden and examined under cover of the wall. Evidently the guards had no intention of disclosing their position by using the flash-light in the open. Natorp and Zelensky held a brief conversation, in German Colin thought. At the end of it, Zelensky turned to his captives.
“You want to see ze boss? Zen komm zis way.”
Shepherding them before him, he led them off the path and by a circuitous route up to the front door. Evidently trip-wires had been planted freely inside the grounds.
“In zere, their guide ordered, pointing to the door of a room with the barrel of his pistol. “And no larks. No fonny business. Or I get cross.”
The gross jocosity of Zelensky’s tone in no way veiled the reality of the underlying threat.
Colin turned the handle and entered a sitting-room which had all the appearance of being furnished with discards from Wester Voe. Everything in it was good of its kind; but no one had left the mark of a personality upon it. Those who had lived in it had been mere birds of passage, people who had rented it for a summer and given it none of the character which a permanent abode acquires from its owners.
By the hearth sat a small, dark-moustached man, who at Colin’s sudden entry started nervously. Colin ignored him and turned to the other occupant, who was lounging against the tall mantelpiece with his hands in his jacket-pockets. A big, loosely-built man, he looked larger than he actually was, owing to the slack cut of the grey lounge suit he wore. Colin recognised him as Leven by the peculiar tilt of his eyebrows, which Dinnet had once described. But in a vague way Leven reminded him of someone else. For an instant he was puzzled; then it flashed across his mind that the chemist bore a not-too-distant resemblance to Tenniel’s drawings of the Mad Hatter. The unruly wisps of hair on the temples, the heavy-lidded eyes, the curve of the predatory nose, the two big projecting front teeth, the cut-away chin: all were there. But instead of the mild Hatter of his childhood’s reading, Colin saw before him a ruthless egotist. One glance was enough to tell him that Northfleet had exaggerated nothing in his description of Leven’s character. Here was a man who would move under the springs of self-interest alone.
Leven straightened himself up as Colin entered, and stared at his visitor with pale-blue eyes which betrayed nothing of his thoughts.
“Ziss is Trent. From Vester Foe,” Zelensky explained abruptly. “And a friendt of his. Zey have somezing to tell you.”
Leven wasted no breath on conventional openings.
“Well, what is it? What is it?” he asked impatiently, like a man interrupted in some important work by a child’s intrusion.
Colin was too overwrought to resent the rudeness of this reception. He broke into a concise account of what he had seen since he left Wester Voe. Leven listened, but his first sign of interest came when Colin mentioned the man from Scotland Yard.
“I’d like to know what he’s doing here.”
“I don’t know. He didn’t tell me,” Colin assured him irritably, and continued his tale.
When he had finished, Leven clicked his tongue once or twice as though in vexation; but otherwise he made no comment. Colin was aghast at this lack of response.
“Don’t you understand?” he demanded. “Your niece is in the hands of these scoundrels at this moment. So is my wife. Have to act quick, if we’re to be any use.”
Leven’s heavy lids drooped a little over his fishy eyes.
“I think my niece is very well able