The Place of Dragons: A Mystery

We were caught like rats in a trap.

In an instant we both realized that we were imprisoned, and began to bang violently upon the heavy doors of iron-bound and unpolished oak, shouting to be let out. The fool of an Arab had secured us there while he went to announce our visit to his master.

I took up a small ebony and pearl coffee-table inlaid with a verse from the Koran, and raising it frantically above my head, attacked the locked door. But when it struck the oak it flew into a dozen pieces. Fournier took up a small chair with equally futile result, and then in silence we exchanged glances.

Could it be, that on our approach to the house, we had been recognized by the owner and invited into that room which, with its rising fumes, was nothing less than an ingenious death-trap.

I remembered the sinister grin upon the villainous black face of the silent servant.

Again and again we attacked the door, for we knew that our lives depended upon our escape. We shouted, yelled and banged, but attracted no attention. We threw things at the windows, but they were protected by the wire-work.

Then a sudden thought occurred to me.

Swiftly I bent down and examined the large keyhole. The key had been taken and, it seemed to me, the heavy bolt of the lock had been shot into a deep socket in the framework of the door.

Without a word I motioned Fournier to stand back, and finding that the barrel of my revolver was, fortunately, small enough to insert into the keyhole, I pushed it in and pulled the trigger.

A loud explosion followed, and splinters of wood and iron flew in all directions. The bolt of the lock was blown away and the door forced open.

Next second, with revolvers in our hands, we stood facing two black faced servants, who drew back in alarm as we rushed from that lethal chamber.

Fournier, excited as a Frenchman naturally would be in such circumstances, raised his weapon and shouted in Arabic that he was a police-officer, and that all persons in that house were to consider themselves under arrest. Whereupon both men, Moors they were most probably, fell upon their knees begging for mercy.

My companion exchanged some quick words with them, and they entered into a conversation, while at the same moment, casting my eyes across the beautiful, blue-tiled, vaulted hall, I looked through an open door into the room which the Count d'Esneux used for his experiments in wireless.

At a glance I recognized, by the variety of the apparatus, the size of the great spiral transmitting helix, by the pattern of the loose-coupled tuning inductance, the big variable condensers, those strange-looking circular instruments of zinc vanes enclosed in a round glass, used for receiving, the electrolytic detector, and the big crystal detector, a gold point working over silicon, carborundum, galena, and copper pyrites – that the station must have a very wide range. The spark-gap was bigger than any I had ever before seen, while there was a long loading coil enabling any distant station using long wave-lengths to be picked up, as well as the latest type of potentiometer, used to regulate the voltage and current supplied to the detectors.

At a glance I took in the whole arrangement, placed as it was, upon a long table beneath a window of stained glass at the further end of that luxurious little Moorish chamber. Apparently no cost had been spared in its installation, and I fully believed that with it the notorious criminal could communicate with any station within a radius of, perhaps, two thousand miles.

Fournier had questioned the native servants rapidly, and received their replies, which were at first unsatisfactory. I saw by the fear in their faces that he had threatened them, when suddenly one of them excitedly made a statement.

"Diable!" cried the detective in French, turning to me. "The Count recognized us, and had us locked in that death-chamber while he and the Englishman, M'sieur Vernon, got away!"

"Escaped!" I gasped in dismay. "Then let us follow."

A quick word in Arabic, and the two servants, without further reluctance, dashed away along the big hall, through several luxuriously-furnished rooms full of soft divans, where the air was heavy with Eastern perfumes and the decorations were mostly in dark red and blue. Then across a small cool courtyard paved with polished marble, where another fountain plashed, and out to the sun-baked palm-grove which sloped from the front of the house away to the calm sapphire sea.

Excitedly the men pointed, as we stood upon the marble terrace, to a white speck far away along the broken coast of pale brown rocks, a speck fast receding around the next point, behind which was hidden the harbour of Algiers.

"By Gad!" I cried, gazing eagerly after it, "that's a motor-boat, and they are making for the town! We mustn't lose an instant or they will get away to some place of safety."

So together we dashed back to the road as fast as our legs could carry us, and drove with all possible speed back to the town, in order to reach the harbour before the fugitives could land.

CHAPTER XXVIII

DESCRIBES A CHASE

The driver, with the southerner's disregard of the feelings of animals, lashed his weedy horse into a gallop, as up-hill and down-hill we sped, back to the town.

Entering the city gate, the man scattered the dogs and foot-passengers by his warning yells in Arabic, until at last we were down upon the long, semi-circular quay, our eager eyes looking over the blue, sun-lit sea.

No sign could we discern of the motor-boat, but Fournier, with his hand uplifted, cried —

"See! Look at that white steam-yacht at the end of the Mole – the long, low-built one. That belongs to the Count. Perhaps he has already boarded her!"

I looked in the direction my companion indicated, and there saw lying anchored about half a mile from the shore a small white-painted yacht, built so low that her decks were almost awash, with two rakish-looking funnels, and a light mast at either end with a wireless telegraph suspended between them. The French tricolour was flying at the stern.

From the funnels smoke was issuing, and from where I stood, I could see men running backwards and forwards.

"She's getting under weigh," I cried. "The fugitives must be aboard. We must stop them."

"How can we?" asked the Frenchman, dismayed. "Besides, why should we – except that we were nearly suffocated in that room."

"That man you know as the Comte d'Esneux is the most dangerous criminal in all Europe," I told him. "To the Prefecture of Police in Paris – to you in Algiers also – he is known as Jules Jeanjean!"

"Jules Jeanjean!" choked out the man in the shabby straw hat. "Is that the actual truth, M'sieur?"

"It is," I replied. "And now you know the cause of my anxiety."

"Why, there is a reward of four hundred thousand francs for his capture, offered by companies who have insured jewels he has stolen," he cried.

"I know. Now, what shall we do?" I asked, feeling myself helpless, for at that moment I saw the motor-boat draw away from the yacht, with only one occupant, the man driving the engine. It had turned and was speeding along the coast back in the direction of the villa, white foam rising at its elevated bows.

"What can we do?" queried my companion. "That yacht is the fastest privately owned craft in the Mediterranean. It is the Carlo Alberta, the Italian torpedo-boat built at Spezzia two years ago. Because it did not quite fulfil the specifications, it was disarmed and sold. The Count purchased her, and turned her into a yacht."

"But surely there must be some craft on which we could follow?" I exclaimed. "Let's see."

We drove down to the port, and after a few rapid inquiries at the bureau of the harbour-master, found that there was lying beyond the Mole, a big steam-yacht belonging to an American railway magnate named Veale. The owner and some ladies were on board, and he might perhaps assist the police and give chase.

Quickly we were aboard the fast motor-boat belonging to the harbour authorities, but ere we had set out, the Carlo Alberta, with long lines of black smoke issuing from her funnels, had weighed anchor and was slowly steaming away.

Silas J. Veale, of the New York Central Railroad, a tall, very thin, very bald-headed man in a smart yachting suit, greeted us pleasantly when we boarded his splendid yacht. When he heard our appeal he entered into the adventure with spirit and gave the order to sail at once.

Beside us, on his own broad white deck, he stood scanning the low-built, rapidly disappearing Carlo Alberta through his binoculars.

"Guess they'll be able to travel some! We'll have all our work cut out if we mean to keep touch with them. Never mind. We'll see what the old Viking can do."

Then he shouted another order to his captain, a red-whiskered American, urging him to "hurry up and get a move on!"

As we stood there, three ladies, his wife and two daughters, the latter respectively about twenty-two and twenty, all of them in yachting costumes, came and joined us, eagerly inquiring whither we were bound.

"Don't know, Jenny," he replied to his wife. "We're just following a couple of crooks who've got slick away in that two-funnelled boat yonder, and we mean to keep in touch with them till they land. That's all."

"Then we're leaving Algiers!" exclaimed the younger girl regretfully.

"Looks like it, Sadie," was his reply. "The police have requested our aid, an' we can't very well refuse it." Then turning to me he exclaimed, "Say, I wonder where they're making for?"

"They are the most elusive pair of thieves in Europe," I replied. "They are certain to get away if we do not exercise the greatest caution."