The Red Widow; or, The Death-Dealers of LondonLe Queux, William
General
The Red Widow; or, The Death-Dealers of London
Le Queux, William
Mystery fiction
The car hired to take them to Brighton conveyed them only as far as
Redhill, where they dismissed it. The Red Widow, having already
alighted at Sutton, in Surrey, and returning to Victoria by train,
claimed her two trunks. Then, by the aid of her false passport, and
adding age and shabbiness to her appearance, she managed to travel
third-class from Folkestone to Boulogne and, passed by the police and
passport officer there, went on to Paris, where already she had a safe
asylum awaiting her.
At Redhill Boyne and his wife halted at an hotel, and after being inside
for ten minutes the fugitives came out, paid the man, gave him a
handsome douceur and said that they had changed their minds. Thus
dismissed the man returned to London well satisfied.
The pair separated half an hour later, Boyne returning as far as Clapham
Junction, where he changed and went on to Waterloo. His idea was to get
away by Southampton that evening to the Channel Islands, and thence,
after a few days, across to Havre. He knew too well that the game was
up and that his only chance was to get abroad.
On arrival he went into the refreshment room at Waterloo, for he had a
full hour to wait for the next train to Southampton. Having leisurely
drunk a cup of tea, he was just about to emerge when three men near the
door dashed out and pounced upon him.
In an instant he fought like a tiger, but just as quickly the men
gripped him, though not a word was spoken, except that a terrible
imprecation escaped the assassin’s lips.
He was a master-criminal, and the detectives had not gauged the extent
of his wily cleverness.
"Very well," he laughed grimly at last. "You needn’t hurt my arm.
Really, this is all extremely annoying."
A crowd had at once assembled at the first sign of a struggle, but the
detectives hurried him unceremoniously to a taxi, into which they
bundled him. Of that very act Bernard Boyne was swift to take advantage,
for ere they could prevent him he had managed to slip his hand to his
mouth and swallowed something—so quickly, indeed, that the detectives
who sat with him could scarcely realise his action.
Then, as the taxi sped across Waterloo Bridge on its way to Bow Street,
Boyne, turning to his captors with a gay laugh of defiance, said:
"Gentlemen, you have done your duty, but you’ve bruised my arm very
badly. Yet I forgive you. Bernard Boyne has had a long life and a merry
one. But"—he gasped, his face suddenly changed—"but he cheats—he cheats
you—after—after all!"
Next second their prisoner collapsed, and his captors saw to their
horror that he was dead.
Lilla, in ignorance of what had happened, spent the night with a friend
at Reigate, and went next day to Victoria, where she presented the
voucher and obtained her luggage, which she took with her to Liverpool,
having succeeded in purchasing a second-class passage to Canada in the
name of Anna Mansfield, the name upon her forged passport.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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