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Updated: May 3, 2025
I will not trouble you with your aliases. You are known to-day, I believe, as James Rounceby and Richard Marnstam. Will you come quietly?" Marnstam's expression was one of bland and beautiful surprise. "My dear sir," he said, edging, however, a little toward the window "you must be joking! What is the charge?"
Now it is possible that at this precise moment Marnstam would have made his spring for the window and Rounceby his running fight for liberty. The hands of both men were upon their revolvers, and John Dory's life was a thing of no account. But at this juncture a thing happened.
"We've got to get to the bottom of this, Marnstam," Mr. Rounceby muttered. Mr. Marnstam was thinking. "Do you remember that sound through the darkness," he said "the beating of an engine way back on the road?" "What of it?" Rounceby demanded. "It was a motor bicycle," Marnstam said quietly. "I thought so at the time."
Marnstam, who had no nerves, twirled his moustache and watched his companion with wonder. "You look as though you saw a ghost," he remarked. "Perhaps I do!" Rounceby growled. "You had better finish your drink, my dear fellow," Marnstam advised. "Afterwards " Suddenly he stiffened into attention. He laid his hand upon his companion's knee. "Listen!" he said. "There is some one coming."
"I had it direct from headquarters at Paris. What are you uneasy about, eh?" Rounceby pointed towards the clock. "Do you see the time?" he asked. "He said he'd be late," Marnstam answered. Rounceby put his hand to his forehead and found it moist. "It's been a silly game, all along," he muttered. "We'd better have brought the young ass up here and jostled him!" "Not so easy," Marnstam answered.
The door of a flat across the passage was quietly opened. Mr. Peter Ruff, in a neat black smoking suit and slippers, and holding a pipe in his hand, looked out. "Excuse me, gentlemen," he said, "but I do not think that Mr. Cawdor is in. He went out early this evening, and I have not heard him return." The two men turned away. "We are much obliged to you, sir," Mr. Marnstam said.
"I followed Rounceby and Marnstam," he answered, "I knew them when I was abroad, studying crime I could tell you a good deal about both those men if it were worth while and I knew, when they hired a big motor car and engaged a crook to drive it, that they were worth following. I saw the trial of the flying machine, and when they started off with young Franklin, I followed on a motor bicycle.
Rounceby rose to his feet and lit a cigar. Marnstam walked to the further window and back again. They stood side by side. Rounceby's whole frame seemed to have stiffened with some new emotion. "There's something wrong, Jim," Marnstam whispered softly in his ear. "You've got the old lady in your pocket?" "Yes!" Rounceby answered thickly, "and, by Heavens, I'm going to use it!"
"Can I give him any message?" Peter Ruff asked, politely. "We generally see something of one another in the morning." "You can tell him " Rounceby began. "No message, thanks!" Marnstam interrupted. "We shall probably run across him ourselves to-morrow." John Dory was nearly a quarter of an hour late. After his third useless summons, Mr. Peter Ruff presented himself again.
Side by side on one of the big leather couches in the small smoking room of the Milan Hotel, Mr. James P. Rounceby and his friend Mr. Richard Marnstam sat whispering together. It was nearly two o clock, and they were alone in the room. Some of the lights had been turned out. The roar of life in the streets without had ceased.
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