He was interrupted by a knock at the door. He motioned Cappock to answer it. The man crossed the room. His stoop was very noticeable. He opened the door slightly and peered out. Then he pulled it wide open and two men came in, dressed in a dark-brown livery and carrying a large tin box between them. It was black and had the name A. Cappock painted in white on the lid. It was a deed-box of the type you see trundled in and out of banks in the City. But it was a good deal larger than the ones I was accustomed to seeing. ‘Cappock’s deed-box and your coffin,’ Max Sedel told me.
Until that moment, I think the whole scene had appeared somewhat unreal to me. I had seen much of the seamy side of London and other big cities. I knew that strange things happened behind the quiet façade of these places. But those who live in London never fear it. The strange happenings they read of never touch them, never break the daily routine of their lives. My eyes turned to the window. I could see the bare black branches of the trees in the park. Soon they would be green, with the bright fresh green of spring. My heart overflowed with the longing to see that spring green again. The cold wretched winter was a thing of the past. Ahead lay the spring, with promise of new things. And in that moment it was of Freya I thought. My eyes travelled from Sedel’s revolver to the tin box and back again to the revolver. But my brain scarcely registered what my eyes saw, for my mind was occupied with a picture of that oval face, with the slender arch of the eyebrows and wide dark eyes above the finely chiselled nose. I saw down the whole corridor of my life, and where I had before been satisfied with it, with my success as a criminal barrister, with my wide circle of friends, with the pleasant times I had had, I now found it empty and lifeless. And the park would soon be green again! Yet I was to end my life inconspicuously, murdered because I knew too much. I felt a sudden rage. Was I to let life be taken from me just as I had found something that made it so precious?
I had risen to my feet and stood facing Sedel. ‘You fool!’ I said. ‘Do you think I haven’t prepared for this? You have burgled my club to get a statement of mine that I left with the secretary. But do you imagine that that was the only statement?’
He smiled. He had recovered his self-possession. ‘So, you have another statement? That was to be expected. But I do not think your friend Crisham will pay much attention to it. By describing this tin box as your coffin, I fear I have given you a wrong impression. You will live — for a time. And during the next few weeks you will send Crisham a number of statements. You will accuse various public men of crimes against the State, and each accusation will be more fantastic than the last. By the time he has checked up on a few of these accusations he will not be inclined to pay much attention to the original statement when it is placed in his hands. Nor will he be altogether surprised when he hears that you are an imposter and that the real Kilmartin is dead. You will be regarded as a madman.’
‘And who is to sign these false statements?’ I asked.
‘Why you, of course.’
‘You know I shall not,’ I replied hotly.
‘Oh, but I think you will, Mr Kilmartin.’ There was a gleam in his eyes, and the relief, which I had felt at realising that my death was deferred for the time being, vanished and my heart sank. The rubber truncheon, the steel-cored whip and all the other horrors of the concentration camp filled my mind. I had heard about these things so often. But they had been something remote, like a flood in China or an earthquake in South America. They had not touched me. I tried to think that torture was no longer a weapon used by civilised nations. I tried to persuade myself that this sort of thing could not possibly happen in the middle of London. But I knew it could. I knew that though I was in a well-known hotel in Piccadilly, I was as far beyond the pale of legal protection as I should be in Germany itself.
My eyes suddenly met Sedel’s and I braced myself. The little blighter was watching me with a faint smile on his lips. The gleam was still in his eyes, and at that moment I think I understood him. Germany is essentially an athletic country, and this man was no athlete. Physically he was weak. There is nothing so deadly as a man whose ambition is spurred on by an inferiority complex. Sedel’s absorbing interest in life, as I saw it then, was power. Not power in the big sense. But physical power. The power of life and death. The power to torture. For seven years he had laboured in a hostile country to build up a position that would give him the power to kill men. Now he was realising the first fruits of those labours. And as I looked into those eyes I saw stark bestial cruelty. The man was a sadist, and I had a horrible fear that his sadism would take a mental as well as a physical form. He might even drive me mad.
An awful horror surged through me at that thought. It centred itself upon the deed-box. I always had a horror of being shut up in a place with no means of getting out. It was a mild form of claustrophobia. It was sheer terror more than anything else that gave me courage. With a sudden movement, I sprang at him, swinging my fist as I came. He was not prepared for this sudden rush. He had no time to use his gun. I am a fairly heavy man, and he caught the full force of the blow on the mouth. I felt his teeth splinter. I swung my left to his stomach and dived for the door.
But the two men in livery cut me off. I turned back and flung myself on Sedel’s gun, which he still held in his hand as he sprawled, writhing across a table. My fingers closed on the steel barrel and I wrenched it from him. Then I turned, and I knew the game was up. I have a very vivid picture of that split second before I passed out. It remains in my mind like a still from a film. I can’t remember anyone moving. All I remember is one of the liveried men stooping forward towards me, his right hand half-raised and clutching the soda-water siphon by the neck. Across the knuckles of his hand ran a thin white scar. I also remember quite clearly that on the lapels of his jacket were eagles, swooping on their prey, emblazoned in gold. And then I knew nothing more until I awoke to the gentle movement of a car going slowly.
A great pain in my head came and went, came and went, in agonising rhythmic waves. Like a gentle murmur at the back of my brain I heard the engine of a car, and there were voices, too, but they sounded very far away. For a moment everything went blank again. Then I noticed that the car had stopped. And almost immediately started again. And alongside it was the pulsating roar of a diesel-engined vehicle gathering way.
For a time I could not think what had happened. Consciousness kept coming and going with the hammer strokes in my head. For a moment I thought I must have been involved in a street accident, for I had guessed that the diesel-engined vehicle had been a bus. I could hear faintly the sound of the London streets all about us and I felt certain that I was in an ambulance, being taken to hospital. Then, suddenly, I remembered the blow. It was not the actual blow that I remembered, but the picture I had seen as I turned, the man with his upraised arm, the little white scar and the eagles on his lapels.
And then an awful terror came upon me. Had I been blinded? I could see nothing. Yet I knew it should be daylight. Or, at any rate, there should be a gleam of light in the car. But though I opened my eyes wide, everything was as black as pitch. Men’s voices sounded quite close to me, though muffled. I tried to put out my hand to attract their attention. But I could not move. I tried to speak. But something seemed to stifle the words in my throat.