The senator was still walking about the room from map to map when Gaillard entered to inform Rochelle that the limousine was in front. The senator heard the servant’s statement. He glanced at his watch. He walked toward the hall.
“Sorry,” he said, “but I really must get back to the hotel. When I have the opportunity, Rochelle, I shall come to see you. I want to hear more about your peace plans. You are here most of the day?”
“Nearly all the time.” They were in the hallway, and Rochelle waved his hand toward a broad marble staircase that led directly to the second floor. “My private office is above. Call at any time you wish, senator. Good night, sir.”
AS soon as the visitor had departed, Darvin Rochelle turned and limped toward the stairway. His halting stride ended as he moved up the steps. It began again when he reached the top.
The man with the limp opened a door and entered a large anteroom, where chairs lined the walls. He passed through to another door and stepped into an office that was furnished with expensive mahogany. Here, Rochelle seated himself at a huge desk near the center of the room.
Directly to the left of the desk was a huge globe of the world. It was more than three feet in diameter; it rested in a circular mahogany cradle atop a heavy metal tripod. Pausing by the globe, Rochelle rested upon his cane. With his free hand, he spun the big sphere and watched it revolve.
A strange smile appeared upon Rochelle’s face. Here in the lighted room, his features showed a curious change of expression. From those of an idealist, they became the countenance of a gloating schemer.
The spinning globe slowly dawdled to a stop. Rochelle seated himself behind the desk. He opened a drawer and reached inside. His fingers found a buzzer hidden at the top of the drawer. Rochelle pressed the button and waited. He was looking toward a mirror at the right side of the room.
The glass showed the reflection of a doorway at the back of the office. While Rochelle watched, the door opened and a stoop-shouldered creature entered with stealthy tread.
The newcomer was a dwarf, twisted in body, vicious in face. An ugly smile was on the deformed man’s puffed lips.
“Over there, Thurk,” ordered Rochelle quietly. He indicated the opposite side of the desk.
The dwarf complied. He took his stand in front of his master. Resting both hands upon the desk, he formed a grotesque monster with long, scrawny arms and head that seemed too large for the skinny shoulders which supported it.
Wild eyes gleamed from Thurk’s pasty face. Bloated lips moved while the hideous creature spoke in a harsh, strange tongue:
“Kye kye rofe kye.”
“Sovo,” returned Rochelle, in a quiet tone. “Reen kye kye doke?”
“Sake alta alta. Seek alta eeta.”
“Kye kye kode?”
“Fee.”
“Dake.”
With this syllabic utterance, Rochelle arose from his chair. He walked directly to the door where he had seen Thurk’s reflection. As the master limped in that direction, the dwarf followed with bounding steps.
BEYOND the door, Rochelle came to a spiral staircase. He descended, without the aid of his cane. Thurk continued, creeping downward, until they reached a small room at the bottom of the steps. Here Rochelle unbarred a steel door. He turned out the single light and opened the barrier amid darkness.
Rochelle limped out into the cool air of a walled courtyard. Directly ahead, showing dimly in the vague light that came from above, was an iron fence with a little gate. It formed the rear of Rochelle’s property. Beyond it was the back of a dilapidated house, for Rochelle’s mansion was on the fringe of a decadent district.
Through the gate, Rochelle unlocked the back door of the house in the rear. He entered and groped his way to a flight of stairs. At the bottom, Thurk, still following, could hear the click of his master’s cane against the stone of a cellar floor. Rochelle turned on a light.
Lying on the floor was the body of a young man. The blood-incrusted front of a tuxedo shirt showed where a bullet had ended the victim’s life. Rochelle sneered as he gripped a post beside him and used his cane to poke at the body.
Thurk, approaching his master, produced a large envelope from a pocket. He handed it to Rochelle and pointed significantly to the body on the floor.
“Rike zay folo folo,” declared the dwarf.
“Sovo,” returned Rochelle.
He took the envelope, thrust it in a pocket of his evening clothes and pointed to the body with his cane.
Thurk understood the gesture. He stooped; with a display of remarkable strength, he hoisted the corpse to his shoulders and carried it through an archway in the cellar. Rochelle, still gripping the post, was listening. He heard a splash as Thurk dropped the body into some hidden vat.
A soft, insidious snarl came from Rochelle’s lips. Leaning upon his cane, the man with the limp clicked back across the cellar. He retraced the course that he had taken; back into his own house; up the spiral stairway to his finely furnished office.
There, he opened the envelope that Thurk had given him. Within it was another envelope which bore the typewritten statement:
South American Correspondence.
Documents came out upon the desk. With eager eyes, Rochelle began to study them. His visage showed an evil gleam, as he perused these papers which had been purloined from a murdered man.
Completing his inspection, Rochelle arose and moved to a safe in the wall. He turned the combination, opened the safe, then placed the papers within. He closed the door and turned to find that Thurk had come back. Rochelle dismissed the dwarf with a wave of his hand.
Alone again, Rochelle indulged in a fiendish smile that gradually faded from his lips to restore his benign expression. Then, with the aid of his cane, he clumped through another door at the back of the office.
The hollow taps of the walking stick faded. Darvin Rochelle had retired for the night. Yet the echoes of that clicking cane seemed to leave their mark.
Those clicks had told of the footsteps of Darvin Rochelle, a man whose life, presumably, had been devoted to ways of peace and friendship. Such, however, was a pretense.
The footsteps of Darvin Rochelle had led to crime. The man with the limp was a monster whose ways were those of murder!
CHAPTER II
WORD TO THE SHADOW
LATE the next afternoon, a man appeared upon the fifth floor of the old Wallingford Building. He strolled through an empty corridor until he reached a door which bore this title:
NATIONAL CITY NEWS ASSOCIATION
CLYDE BURKE, MANAGER
The visitor opened the door. Inside he found a young man seated at a desk. This was Clyde Burke, manager and entire staff of the National City News Association. The visitor grinned as Burke looked up.
“Hello, Burke,” he said.
“Hello, Garvey,” returned Burke. “What brings you here so late?”
“Nothing special. Just thought I’d drop in.”
The visitor sat down. He watched Burke going over piles of clippings, while he puffed at a cigarette. The visitor lighted one of his own. Like Burke, Garvey was a free-lance journalist who had chosen Washington as a place to make a living through news correspondence.
Several minutes drifted by. Clyde Burke, stacking clippings in envelopes, paid no attention to his visitor. That proved to be the best way to start Garvey talking. The visiting newspaperman gave up an attempt to blow smoke rings and began to drawl in casual fashion.
“Heard another hot rumor today,” he said.
“What’s this one?” quizzed Burke, in a matter-of-fact tone.
“Another attache gone haywire,” remarked Garvey. “Here in Washington yesterday. Not here today. That makes number five.”