Flat 2

A shot rang out sharply, and Captain Hurley Brown did not need the
direction of the sound to guide him to Robert Weldrake's door. He had
tried to intercept the white-faced boy, who had brushed him aside and
entered his room, slamming the door and locking it.

Hurley Brown had seen that expression on a man's face before, and that
man, too--just such another promising young officer as Robert
Weldrake--had worn it on his return from the last of several interviews
with Emil Louba. A shot had followed on that occasion also. Lingering
outside, uneasy, smoking cigarette after cigarette, unable to seek his
own quarters with the memory of that stricken-face before him, he was
debating whether to insist on the boy opening his door to him when the
shot stabbed the silence and sent him tearing up the half-dozen shallow
stairs to the locked door.

There was no answer to his knock, and he scarcely waited for any,
Putting his shoulder to the door, he had already forced it inwards,
straining at the lock, when McElvie, Weldrake's batman, and two officers
joined them; and their combined efforts burst the lock, sending them
staggering a few paces into the room.

There was little need to raise him. They saw at a glance that Robert
Weldrake was dead. The room was still full of an acrid smell, his
stiffening fingers clutched at his service revolver.

'That damned Louba!' muttered Brown, the first to break the silence, and
more than one of his companions spat out vicious curses.

'If somebody would shoot him. Malta'd be a lot cleaner,' declared
McElvie wrathfully. Nobody disagreed with him. That Louba was the cause
of the tragedy was accepted without debate. It was not an isolated case.

Hurley Brown hated Louba. He had seen too many men ruined by him and his
kind. He had determined to drive him out of Malta, and had already taken
steps to interest the military authorities in the evil influence his
establishment exercised over the men stationed on the island.

He had seen the disaster towards which Robert Weldrake drifted, had
tried to gain his confidence, to warn him; but the boy had been too deep
in to extricate himself.

When nothing more was to be done, and they left the still figure to its
loneliness. Brown separated from the others and walked briskly towards
Louba's establishment. As he entered the cabaret, which was a gaudy mask
for the remaining and more important part of the establishment, he
became aware that there was something unusual happening.

The music had ceased and general conversation had died y away. Glasses
were neglected and all heads were turned in the same direction. So far
as Hurley Brown could see, it appeared to be an altercation between a
customer and one of the performers, a scantily dressed dancer or singer
who still had one foot on the low platform at the end of the room. The
man she faced was plump and voluble, dark-eyed, with a full florid face
and a flamboyant style of dress.