Grey Face/Chapter 29

ENJAMIN TEAK, sometime a chief officer in the United States mercantile marine, had long ago lost his ticket for gross malpractices. New York has sent some tough men to sea, and Teak lived fully up to his name and the reputation of his class.

He had been a capable seaman and would have made an excellent pirate. This career being closed to him, he had proceeded to make the best of things ashore, and had engaged in a number of enterprises demanding strength and physical courage, together with complete unscrupulousness, not without a certain measure of success. He was a man who never remained very long in one place. In him, the wanderlust was strong.

So, sometimes affluent, sometimes needy, but always open to any job which promised a speedy return, he had drifted one fine day into the city of Moscow.

The condition of Russia at the time was not attractive from an ordinary traveller's point of view. Tourist agents were not including Moscow in any of their itineraries. But to Teak and others of his class Russia was a magnet. Dangers did not appal him-he had survived many; but amid social disorders, as he had learned in South America, there is always a prospect of loot.

The adventure, nevertheless, had proved unprofitable up to the time that Fate introduced him to Doctor Weissler and Herr Krauss.

Returning late one night from a café to his lodgings, Teak, crossing the end of a narrow by-way, beheld a fight for life taking place in the sanctified shadows of an ancient monastery.

Such spectacles were not unusual in Moscow at the time, nor were they unfamiliar throughout the memories of Teak's life. But this particular conflict had unique features.

Of the pair engaged in it one—an elderly man endowed with a profusion of white hair—was dressed as well as it was discreet to dress in Moscow under existing conditions, whilst the other, a hirsute, black-bearded creature with incredibly long arms, seemed to belong to the artisan class.

Teak, unnoticed by the combatants, paused a few steps from the corner, watching the fight. The bearded fighter clearly possessed abnormal strength; so much so, that by degrees he was overcoming the other, a powerfully built man, and for all his advancing years, no mean adversary. Save for a panting like that of animals in conflict, with, sometimes, a sibilant breath visible like smoke in the ice-cold air, they fought silently, the hairy man point by point gaining the advantage. Teak scratched his chin reflectively.

Interference might result in arrest; these were queer times. On the other hand, it might result in profit. Thus far, he had drawn blank in Moscow. He was a man of quick decision and he decided to gamble.

In ten seconds he was on the spot. The long-armed, bearded man, who on closer inspection proved to be even more hideous than he had supposed, had now secured a stranglehold upon his opponent and was slowly crushing life from the latter.

Teak bent forward, clasping his big hands around the hairy throat of the victor. A gurgling cry—a gasp—and the strangling fingers relaxed. Teak threw the fellow on his back and stood waiting for what was to come.

The older man, lying with his head almost touching the wall of the monastery, began to inhale painful, sobbing breaths; and Teak, staring down at him, made a remarkable discovery. The snowy locks were false—a wig! It had become disarranged; and beneath it appeared the stranger's own virile, close-curling red hair!

Teak whistled softly—then side-stepped, ducked, and encountered one of the big thrills of his life.

Before his experienced calculations had allowed as possible, the other, hideous ape-like abortion, was on his feet again, had cunningly dodged a lead-off with the left calculated to fell an Argentine mule, and had closed.

Teak, to his consternation, found himself engaged in a life-or-death struggle with a creature apparently possessed of the strength of an orang-outang! He could have given his opponent the better part of three stone, yet when at last he conquered, and the man lay groaning at his feet, he realized that he was dangerously near the end of his own resources.

This proved to be a turning point in Teak's career. That very night he was introduced to Doctor Weissler's establishment in Moscow and offered immediate employment on the staff of this singular scientist. The Doctor, fully aware that his rescuer had detected the disguise, offered an explanation, characterized by reticence, which represented him to be an enemy of the Soviet Government. Teak kept his own counsel. The exact nature of his duties was far from clear. That he was to act as bodyguard for his employer he speedily learned.

Krauss, the name by which the bearded creature was known, he discovered to be Doctor Weissler's partner in the undefined enterprise which engaged them in Moscow. Weissler, in whom Teak was not slow to recognize a clever man and a dangerous enemy, conveyed, without definitely stating it for a fact, that Krauss at times became subject to a form of homicidal mania, a heritage of experiences during the late war. It would be one of Teak's duties to curb these outbursts, as, on this eventful night, he had shown himself capable of doing.

Teak reserved any criticisms which may have occurred to him at the time, and gratefully accepted the offer, persuaded that nothing but a criminal secret could bind any man of culture to such a creature as Krauss. This secret Teak proposed to learn, and to employ the information for his personal profit.

In the cellars of the house he was shown a number of furnaces and was introduced to a certain Mr. Michael, a distinguished-looking Russian gentleman with whom, Doctor Weissler informed him, he would take watches in the furnace room.

"Hitherto, either Mr. Krauss or myself have been compelled to relieve Mr. Michael," the Doctor explained; "and for some time I have been looking for a reliable assistant."

Certain crucibles had to be kept at a high, even temperature for many hours. The degree varied in the case of each of the six furnaces in operation. There was a chart upon which these particulars were clearly marked and a sort of log-book in which entries must be made every half hour. It was mechanical labour, but extreme care was demanded in maintaining the exact degrees of heat.

The matter was settled, and Teak returned to his lodgings for his scanty belongings. He fell asleep whilst he was packing his grip, and was awakened by an evil-looking man having close-cropped black hair and a yellow, parchment skin. This was Dimitri, Doctor Weissler's confidential servant.

This association, so strangely commenced, continued without much friction for many months—indeed nearly up to the time that Doctor Weissler left Moscow. Save for one maniacal outburst by Krauss, Teak's duties had not proved exacting. On the other hand, so skilfully was the place conducted that he had made very little headway with his own private schemes.

Mr. Michael he had been compelled to give up as a bad job; he was utterly unapproachable, and treated Teak, although always with courtesy, as a person socially beneath his notice. Dimitri he hated, and this hatred was mutual; so that save for Krauss, who had resented his presence from the outset, his sources of information respecting the many things which puzzled him were few.

Finally, Fate, which had first opened the door of this mystery house to Teak, again took a hand.

One day, entering Doctor Weissler's room when the Doctor was temporarily absent, he found upon the table a little heap of almost priceless church ornaments—jewelled loot of some cathedral of the old régime!

Whilst he was eagerly examining this treasure, a slight sound brought him about. Doctor Weissler stood in the doorway behind him; and Teak, bracing himself to meet the gaze of the greenish-brown eyes, revealed upon his rugged face something of what was passing in his mind.

The brief conversation which followed he never forgot—since Weissler brought it to a close by showing him a signed statement in his, Teak's, own indisputable handwriting, wherein were certain details with dates and names of witnesses, which must have assured Teak's imprisonment in New York, Buenos Ayres, or Paris!

It bore the date of the day on which he had entered Weissler's service; and whilst on the one hand he was prepared to stake his life upon the fact that he had not written it, on the other hand he could conscientiously take oath that the writing was his own! Furthermore, there were things set down unknown to any other living man.

Benjamin Teak did not possess an imaginative mind, but he had common sense enough to realize both at this time and later that about Doctor Weissler, his employer, there was much that was abnormal. Many were the hours he wasted in clumsy retrospection, seeking a clue to the time and place at which that appalling statement of his own misdeeds had been written. A sort of inward fear of these mysterious people began to take possession of him. Sometimes at night, as he sat watching the furnaces, this fear would come. It was not physical; in a physical sense he feared Krauss, because of the man's superhuman strength; but it was not fear of a sudden attack which haunted the night watches. It was something worse, something which Teak lacked the subtlety of mind to define.

Of the insanity of Krauss he entertained no doubt—in fact, he regarded the ape-man as scarcely human; but the character of Weissler defied him.

The source of his apparently inexhaustible wealth was a most provoking mystery. That it was crooked Teak never questioned; that except for his handsome salary he had no share in it was a scorn and a reproach. Yet he could make no headway.

There were three rooms in the house in Moscow which he had never entered, and one of his duties—in which he sought vainly to find a clue to the mystery—was instantly to report to Weissler the presence of any Oriental in the neighbourhood, particularly a tall man looking like an Egyptian.

As the months wore on it dawned upon Teak that he was being used as a mere tool in some gigantic criminal enterprise. Then, at a few days' notice, the house was dismantled. He found himself entrained for Paris with instructions to report to an address at Batignolles.

In Paris Doctor Weissler inaugurated the system afterward pursued in London, of conducting two distinct establishments and living two carefully separated lives. In one of these existences he threw off the disguise—the florid make-up, glasses, and snowy wig—associated with that secret, furtive quest of nature's mysteries. He lived in the sun; revealing himself splendidly, to an astonished capital as Anton de Trepniak, a wealthy international.

At a dilapidated works which had been rented by Dimitri the famous furnaces were installed. Here Doctor Weissler presided, but Trepniak was unknown. In a palatial residence near the Bois de Boulogne, leased from a Jewish financier weary of the lady who had occupied it, M. de Trepniak entertained the smartest people in Paris. Here Doctor Weissler was unknown and Mr. Michael never came.

Krauss was occasionally present but always invisible, whilst Teak's duties sometimes took him to the palace in the Avenue and sometimes to the derelict factory at Batignolles. His dreams, however, remained unrealized. A great part of Trepniak's life in Paris was a closed book to him. He began to realize that this disability was common to every one of his associates, with the possible exception of Krauss.

The latter was now reconciled in a measure to Teak as a member of the group, but Teak instinctively avoided the deformed creature, distrustful of his motives and ever prepared to find the long, ape-like arms suddenly locked in steely strength about his body. On several occasions in Paris Krauss approached him furtively, urging him to keep a sharp lookout for an Egyptian who might wear a red cap or a blue turban.

Then came a time when Teak grew conscious of that same curious atmosphere of tension which had preceded their removal from Moscow.

In the privacy of his own comfortable room he paced up and down, beating his great fist into the palm of his left hand, and swearing wildly. They were going to move again—he felt it coming; and he knew why, because of a long experience in crooked ways.

Trepniak had made Paris too hot to hold him, Trepniak. It had been the same in Moscow. The means by which he was enabled to live as formerly only Russian Grand-dukes could live, was in danger of official discovery. Yet he, Teak, with access to much which must necessarily be hidden from the authorities, knew no more to-day of the source of this wealth than he knew at the time that he first entered Trepniak's service in Russia.

His premonition proved to be accurate. Some three weeks later he found himself in London, installed as manager of Weissler & Company in Limehouse; and he became an astonished spectator of prodigality in Park Lane which exceeded even the insane luxury of Trepniak's life in Paris.

Dimitri was butler in the London establishment, and with him came the Nubian mutes who had astonished the French capital—Magrabi (an Egyptian eunuch) and a number of female servants none of whom spoke English. The latter, with Magrabi, were installed in a third establishment occupied by a beautiful Russian whom Trepniak had met in Paris.

And now, definite discord disturbed the former harmony of the group. Its cause was not easily discernible, but at last a day dawned when Teak obtained a further glimpse into the mystery.