The spies shouted, cursed, and fired their revolvers at us through the thick smoke, but we were quickly downstairs and out in the road.
"That will soon drive out the rats," laughed Ray, as we watched the flames burst through the roof and saw the two men escape half dressed through the window we had opened.
And as, with the red glare behind us, we hurried back to the spot where we had left our car, Ray remarked, with a laugh of triumph:
"Stolberg bought that place two years ago with money, no doubt, supplied from Berlin, so he's scarcely likely to come upon us for incendiarism, I think. It was the only way--to make one big bonfire of the whole thing!"
CHAPTER IV
HOW THE GERMANS ARE PREPARING FOR INVASION
"We're going down to Maldon, in Essex," Ray Raymond explained as we drove along in a taxi-cab to Liverpool Street Station late one grey snowy afternoon soon after our return from Norfolk.
He had been away from London for three weeks, and I had no idea of his whereabouts, except that one night he rang me up on the telephone from the Cups Hotel, at Colchester.
An hour ago he had returned to New Stone Buildings in the guise of a respectable mechanic in his Sunday clothes, and, full of bustle and excitement, urged me to run across to Guilford Street and assume a similar disguise. Then, each with his modest bag, we had hailed a motor-cab and given the man instructions to drive to the Great Eastern terminus.
"You've read the affair in this evening's paper, I suppose?" my companion asked; "the mystery at Button's Hill?"
"Yes," I replied. "Are we about to investigate it?"
"That's my intention, my dear Jacox," was his quick reply, as he handed me his cigarette-case. Then, ten minutes later, when we were seated together alone in a third-class carriage slowly leaving London, he turned to me, and with a deep earnest look upon his face, said:
"There's much more behind what appears in the papers regarding this curious affair--depend upon it, old chap. I've wired to Vera to be prepared to come to Maldon on receipt of a telegram. The facts, as far as are at present known, are these," he went on as he slowly lit another cigarette: "At an early hour this morning a farm labourer, on his way to work between Latchingdon and Southminster, discovered, lying in a ditch, the body of James Pavely, aged forty-three, a well-known fisherman and pilot. His head had been crushed by savage blows, his clothes were soaked with blood, and he was nearly buried beneath the snow. The labourer alarmed the police, and the body was conveyed to Southminster.
Pavely, who was very popular at the waterside at Maldon, was unmarried, and until recently had been rather well-to-do, but for the past few months bad luck is said to have persistently pursued him, and he had been left without a boat, even without a share in a boat, and more recently he had been out of a job altogether. Now," he added, with a keen look, "I want to fix that point in your mind. For months, ever since the summer, he has been known to be on the verge of starvation, yet the police have found in his trousers' pocket a handkerchief in which, carefully tied up, were forty-nine sovereigns!"
"His savings?" I suggested.
"No," declared my companion conclusively.
"But if he was murdered, why wasn't the money taken?" I queried.
Ray smiled, his face assuming that sphinx-like expression by which I knew that he had formed some theory--a theory he was about to put to the test.
"The reason we have to discover, Jacox," he said vaguely. "The dead man is a pilot," he added; "and in Maldon are many German spies."
"But I don't see that the fact of Pavely pursuing the honourable calling of pilot would arouse the enmity of any secret agent," I remarked.
"We shall see," was my friend's response; and he became immersed in his paper.
On reaching the prosperous little town of Maldon we left our bags in the cloak-room. The snow was lying thickly, but it was no longer falling. A sharp frost had set in, rendering the roads very slippery. In the darkness infrequent lights glimmered here and there in the quaint old streets and among the barges and coasting vessels which lay along the Hithe. The tide was nearly full, and the river covered with half-congealed snow and ice. Few passengers were abroad that wintry evening, but as we passed a small low-built public-house called the "Goat and Binnacle," at the waterside, we could hear that there were many customers within, all of whom seemed to be talking at once.
The red-curtained windows reflected a ruddy chequer upon the trampled snow, and men were coming up by twos and threes from the river craft, one and all wending their way to that low-browed house which seemed to be doing such a roaring trade.
"Let's take a look inside," Ray suggested in a whisper. "We might hear something."
So together we turned back, and entered the low-built, old-fashioned place.
Within, we found them all discussing the mysterious death of Jim Pavely.
Mostly English were the bronzed, weather-beaten men of the sea and the longshoremen who were smoking and drinking, and talking so earnestly, but a few foreigners were among them. There were two or three Frenchmen, dapper fellows in well-made pea-jackets and berets, who had rowed ashore from the big white yawl flying the tricolour, which had been lying off Heybridge waiting, so we heard, for a change from the present icy weather before going to sea again; and there were also a fair number of Swedes and Norwegians from the two timber-ships whose spars, we had noticed, towered above the rows of smaller and stumpier masts belonging to the local and coasting craft which lay alongside the Hithe. Then there was the first mate of one of the timber-ships, supposed by most of those present to be a German. At any rate, he seemed to be trying hard to carry on a conversation with the fair-haired landlord, an undoubted immigrant from the Fatherland.
From one of the seafaring customers with whom I began to chat, I learned that the keeper of the place was named Leopold Bramberger, and that he had been established in that little river-side hostelry rather more than a year, and was now a well-known and more or less respected inhabitant of the borough of Maldon. He had made a little money--so it was generally understood--in the course of some years' service at the Carlton Hotel in London as waiter. And a good waiter he certainly was, as many people living in that part of the country could testify; since he found time to go out as "an extra hand" to many a dinner-party; his services being much appreciated and bringing him in quite a comfortable little addition to what he made by the sale of drink down by the Blackwater. But he did not seem very anxious to talk with his compatriot; indeed, so frequent were the demands made for "another pot of four 'arf," "two of gin 'ot," "another glass of Scotch," and other delectable beverages, that he and his better half had all they could do to grapple with the wants of their customers.
From the conversation about us we gathered that the dead man, though previously somewhat abstemious, had lately become rather a constant frequenter of the "Goat and Binnacle," and though no one had seen him actually drunk, there were not a few who could testify to having seen him in a state very nearly approaching, in their opinion, to "half-seas-over."
"Well, I' give suthing to lay my 'ands on the blackguard as 'as done for pore Jim," remarked a burly longshoreman to his neighbour. "'E'd never done no one a bad turn, as I knows on, and a better feller there wasn't between 'ere an' 'Arwich."
"No there wasn't," came quite a chorus. Jim Pavely, whatever his misfortunes, was evidently a favourite.
"And no one wouldn't have any idea of robbin' pore Jim," interposed another customer; "every one knows that there's bin nothin' on 'im wuth stealin' this many a day--pore chap."
"Except that forty-nine pound," remarked the German landlord, in very good English.
"As for that," exclaimed a little man sitting in the chimney-corner, "I see Belton, the constable, as I were a-coming down here a quarter of an hour ago, an' he says as how there wasn't no signs of any attempt at robbery. Jim had his old five-bob watch in 'is pocket, not worth pawnin'; the sovereigns and some silver were in his trousers."
"Ah! That's the mystery!" exclaimed more than one in surprise. "Why no one wouldn't have thought as Jim 'ad seen the colour o' gold this three months past."
"Come on in and shut the door," cried some one, as a new-comer entered the tap-room, followed by an icy blast and a shower of snow, which was again falling.
"Why, it's Sergeant Newte!" exclaimed the publican, as a burly man in a dark overcoat entered, carefully closed the door, and moved ponderously towards the bar. A sudden hush fell upon the assembly, all eyes and ears being turned towards the representative of the law. All felt that the plain-clothes man bore news of the tragedy, and waited anxiously for the oracle to speak.
"Well, sir," asked Bramberger, "and what can I have the pleasure of serving you with? It isn't often we have the honour of your company down here."
"I won't have anything to-night, thanks," answered the man. "It isn't a drink I'm after, but just a little information that I fancy you, or some of these gentlemen here, may be able to give me. Every one knows that James Pavely was a pretty frequent customer of yours, and what I want to find out is, when he was last in here?"
"Let me see. Last night about seven, wasn't it, Molly?" returned the landlord, turning to his wife. "No, by the by, he came in and had something about a quarter to nine. That's the last we saw of him, poor fellow."
The sergeant in plain clothes produced his notebook. "Who else was in the bar with him?"
"Nobody in particular. Some of the hands from the barges, I fancy. He just had his drink and passed the time of day, as you may say, and was off in five or ten minutes."
"Eh, but you're making a mistake there, Mr. Bramberger," spoke up a voice near by; and the officer turned sharply in the direction of the speaker.
Urged on by those standing round him, Robert Rait, a big longshoreman, came slowly to the front. All eyes were upon him, which caused him to assume a somewhat sheepish aspect.
"Well, Sergeant, true as I'm standing 'ere, I see pore Jim come out of this 'ere bar just after twelve last night along with that young gent as is learnin' farming over Latchingdon way."
At this every one grew interested.
"Are you sure of what you say?" asked the officer sharply.
"Sartin sure. I were sittin' on my barge a-smokin' my pipe, an' I 'eard the clock over at the church, behind 'ere, strike twelve. I don't know why, but I remember I counted the strokes. Five minutes later out come Pavely with the young gent, who I've often seen in this bar afore, an'
they walked off round by the Marine Lake. They never took no notice o'
me. They was too busy a' talkin'."