There was a man named Ezra Surcon who owned much land in London. He did not court publicity; there were no paragraphs about him in the gossip columns of the newspapers, and as a matter of fact his name was never mentioned, even in whispers, among the Real Estate Kings of the metropolis. He made his purchases quickly and without ostentation, and the fact remains that in the space of three days he acquired the freehold of no less than seven properties. There was a gloomy house in Buckingham Gate, and another, equally gloomy, in College Street. For a large sum he secured a vacant building in Great Windmill Street; the imposing mansion in Queen's Gate cost him less; and a modest erection in Orange Street was comparatively cheap. He paid reasonable prices for No. 94, Carter Lane and No. 53, Montague Street. In all, he must have expended five considerable figures of hard cash, but since he transacted his business under seven different aliases no one was startled by the magnitude of his investments.
He was a tall loose-limbed man of rising sixty, yet the elasticity of his gait as he walked down Constitution Hill that evening showed that the years had made only superficial inroads on his physique. The benevolence of his expression was emphasised by the large horn-rimmed spectacles he wore, and contradicted by the tightness of his mouth and the angularity of his jaw. A studious stoop took some inches off his height and the shabbiness of his clothes gave no indication of the wealth to which his lavish expenditures in other directions testified.
He passed behind the Victoria Memorial and entered Buckingham Gate. The residence of which he was the proud landlord stood only a short distance down the road--a gaunt and grimy affair having about it that indescribable air of forbidding unkemptness which is a seal upon the seats of the mighty. The blinds in all the downstairs windows were drawn, and there was no sign of life about the place.
For a moment he stood at the foot of the steps, and if the suggestion had not been so palpably incongruous one would have said he was listening intently for a sound he half expected to come from beneath his feet. Then he inserted his latchkey in the lock and passed inside.
The panelled hall was in twilight, and his footsteps rang out hollowly on the uncarpeted parquet. The soles of his shoes gritted on strewn earth, and sporadic cakes of dirt disfigured the rest of the floor. Peering into one room, he found it filled almost to the ceiling with a great mound of soil and clay.
A door at the back opened suddenly, and he was confronted by a burly man, stripped to the waist.
"Getting on, Torino?" queried Mr. Surcon shortly, and the giant nodded.
"Very well, signor."
From head to foot the man was stippled and plastered with mud, and the streaming perspiration had cut eccentric patterns in the mess.
He led the way through the kitchen and opened a second door. Before them yawned a flight of stairs which led down into the earth, shrouded in a half-light in which danced the beam of the Italian's flashlight as he guided his employer towards the cellars. The steps themselves were inches deep in trodden clay, and down one side ran two heavy insulated cables. From below them came a muffled thud and clatter.
Presently they met another man, half-naked like the guide, who bore on his shoulders a huge basket of earth, and almost on his heels came a second. Surcon passed them with a brief word of greeting.
They reached the cellars and made their way with difficulty across the layer of soil which cloyed their feet. At the far end of the vault yawned a circular hole, and it was from this that the sounds they heard came.
"We have done eighty yards," said Torino. "Another twenty will be sufficient. That engine is a marvel. To-night we finish."
"There's been no difficulty?"
"None, signor. We have many men, and they are relieved before they tire. There are no complaints, for the pay is good."
They stumbled down the tunnel towards the bobbing light that showed in the distance. The roof was low, and they had to bow their heads; even so, Surcon cracked his head once on a buttress and swore softly. A third man, similarly laden with a muddy basket, passed them, and they caught the heavy tread of the two they had passed on the stairs returning.
At length they reached the end.
A powerful electric bulb swung from a stake driven into the earthen roof, making the tunnel almost as light as day. Right up against the ultimate wall was a thing of shining metal on a wheeled truck. The power cables connected with two large terminals on its outer casing, and over it hovered a wizened man with a rag and an oilcan. It thrummed and thudded with the quiet-efficiency of its compressed strength, and from its stern a stream of earth poured down an iron channel into the waiting baskets. Other men, stripped to the waist and sweating, snatched away the baskets as they were filled and rushed them away. From time to time the engineer slewed the truck round so that the machine attacked a fresh area, and once he adjusted a winch that raised it bodily on the truck to burrow at the height of the passage.
Surcon tapped him on the shoulder, and he turned drawing a greasy hand across his forehead.
"It gives no trouble?" he asked in German, and the man shook his head.
"Nein, Herr."
"The dynamo runs well?"
"Recht wohl, Herr."
"Sehr gut!"
Accompanied by Torino, he retraced his steps laboriously, for the tunnel had a distinct upward gradient from the point where the engine was working. He was glad to return to the comparative freshness of the hall, for the atmosphere below was close and almost insufferable.
They entered a room at the back of the house which had once been a beautiful dining-room. Now the polished mahogany table was scarred and stained, and the remains of a meal were congealing on the chipped plates. A pack of cards was spread on the seat of one chair, and a dozen empty beer bottles stood by the wall.
With a gesture of distaste Surcon swept the debris from one end of the table, dusted a chair with his handkerchief, and sat down delicately. His companion followed suit without these precautions.
"Where are the others?" asked Ezra.
"They sleep upstairs, signor. In an hour they relieve those who are working now."
"There is enough room for the earth?"
"Barely, signor. Much will have to be spread on the floor of the tunnel and in the cellars. A little will go in the upstairs room where the relief are resting."
They spoke in Italian, for Mr. Surcon was a linguist.
He took out a bulging wallet and counted out a large sum, and passed the notes across the table.
"There is the pay," he said, "and there is a hundred per cent. bonus for finishing so soon. You will go from here to the other foremen, and tell them to promise their men the same if they complete their work at the time I have ordered."
"Grazie, signor--subito."
"When they finish, they will return to headquarters. Only two need remain--yourself and one other. It is understood?"
"Perfettamento."
The reason of his visit disposed of, the whim seized him to make a second tour of inspection below. This time he did not penetrate the tunnel, but sat on an up-ended packing-case in the cellar, gazing down towards the winking luminance that showed where his machine ploughed on tirelessly. The clamour and purr of it hypnotised him. He realised then, as for the first time, the colossal daring of his plot, and its immense simplicity. The shaft which faced him was paralleled by six others, in various stages of progress, that were being driven to his command at that moment, by similar machinery. He had a stabbing comprehension of the immensity of the Power he was moulding to his hand....
The man Torino, breaking out of the gloom with one of the waste-baskets on his back, paused at the look of intentness on his master's face.
"It is the plan of a genius," he said softly. "So simple--and so unbeatable! It will mean wealth for all."
Surcon nodded.
"Wealth.... But this little hole will be used last. It is our safety-valve--our trump card. While this remains unused and a secret, there can be no danger."
He followed his foreman back to the sty of a living-room and sat down with his chin in his palms, staring into vacancy. The Italian lighted a rank cigarette and searched among the bottles for an unopened one, which he failed to find. Neither spoke, for each was busy with his own thoughts, and the rap-clang of the brass knocker on the front door made them both start.
"See who it is," ordered Surcon, and Torino nodded and tip-toed from the room.
He was back in a moment with a small innocent-looking man whose china-blue eyes swept round the dining-room in one wary all-embracing glance.
"Morini!" snapped Surcon. "Why the devil have you come here? Fool! Would you lead the police----"
"The bulls aren't after me," said Morini calmly. "Arden was on the spot as usual--damn him!--but your idea of having two cars was a brain-wave. He smashed his car into the Carillon, just as I expected, and I jumped from the Navarre. Gee!--I've never seen a man look so sick! He started gunning from the wreckage--plumb in the middle of West Cromwell Road--but we were round the next corner too quick for him."
He spoke without Mecklen's nasal twang, for "Gat" Morini had once been a gentleman--notwithstanding which fact he was infinitely the more dangerous of the two.
"Did you get Marker?"
"Not fatally, though he may die. I always know to a fraction of an inch where my shots go. Arden was so much on the premises he worried me a little, and I misjudged the speed of the car."
Surcon shrugged.
"It doesn't matter," he remarked. "Gunning is crude--I have a better plan now. A few days----"
"A few days, in which Arden may put you behind bars." Morini leaned against the door and began to pour flake tobacco into a curled slip of paper. "You underrate that man, Chief. He's cool--so cool he nearly gives me cold feet. And tough--he's just a slab of Bessemer on two legs." He fixed his cigarette with one deft twist and lighted it in the same movement. "I've met him before, and it was too even a chance between us to make me feel comfortable!"
"Are you scared?" demanded Surcon malignantly. "Because, if so----"
"Scared," said Morini equably, "is a word folks who know old Gat just don't use when I'm around. But I don't mind 'em knowing that a coffin isn't my idea of a good time."
Surcon regarded his subordinate in silence, his big hands locked together on the table, his heavy brows lowered.
"Well?"
"Let me go gunning for him, Chief," begged Morini. "I tell you, I won't feel comfortable in this game till Arden's riding in a black buggy. He'd be easy--he takes any risk. He got Lew, but Lew always was too nervy to be much good at close work. I shouldn't have missed him that night."
Surcon shook his head--reluctantly, one might have thought, but none the less definitely. His fingers untwined, and he flattened his palms slowly on the mahogany in a simple gesture that conveyed better than words the utter finality of his decision.
"No. I'll deal with him. He needn't be killed. We can hold him until the Government have paid up, and then he can go."
"You seem to have a soft spot in your heart for that guy." Morini flicked up an interrogative eyebrow. "Is he your long-lost brother or something?"
Surcon ignored the question.
"How's Rodriguez?"
"Nearly dead. He'll go out to-night for a certainty. Trouble is, we can't have a doc. in with that place looking like a cross between an arsenal and a barracks."
"I'll give instructions about him by telephone."
Surcon rose and buttoned his coat. He picked up his hat, and Morini stood aside to give him passage.
Surcon paused in the doorway, and his eyes fixed the gunman with a cold warning in them that was more acidly menacing than his words.
"You understand?" he said. "Leave Arden to me. If you kill him, you will die. That's all."
Morini showed his teeth.
"Is he your brother, Chief?" he taunted, and then the flame of concentrated venom that licked out of the big man's eyes made him shrink back. In that moment, with that one level gaze, Surcon, unarmed in the presence of a professional killer, showed who was master.
"No--he is my son," he said simply, and was gone.
An hour later he sat at ease in an armchair, reading over the proclamation that was to appear in every London newspaper the next morning. It was a notice absolutely without precedent in the history of crime--an ultimatum set out with all the cold-blooded arrogant effrontery of a Note from an unscrupulous Great Power to an insignificant Power--a manifesto that was staggering in its presumptuous authoritativeness, before which the imagination reeled away with uneasy incredulity.
