Kitabı oku: «The Clue of the Twisted Candle», sayfa 6
CHAPTER X
She felt her knees shake under her and thought she was going to swoon. She put out her disengaged hand to steady herself, and if the face which was turned to him was pale, there was a steadfast resolution in her dark eyes.
“Let me relieve you of that, Miss Holland,” said Kara, in his silkiest tones.
He wrenched rather than took the box from her hand, replaced it carefully in the drawer, pushed the drawer to and locked it, examining the key as he withdrew it. Then he closed the safe and locked that.
“Obviously,” he said presently, “I must get a new safe.”
He had not released his hold of her wrist nor did he, until he had led her from the room back to the library. Then he released the girl, standing between her and the door, with folded arms and that cynical, quiet, contemptuous smile of his upon his handsome face.
“There are many courses which I can adopt,” he said slowly. “I can send for the police—when my servants whom you have despatched so thoughtfully have returned, or I can take your punishment into my own hands.”
“So far as I am concerned,” said the girl coolly, “you may send for the police.”
She leant back against the edge of the desk, her hands holding the edge, and faced him without so much as a quaver.
“I do not like the police,” mused Kara, when there came a knock at the door.
Kara turned and opened it and after a low strained conversation he returned, closing the door and laid a paper of stamps on the girl’s table.
“As I was saying, I do not care for the police, and I prefer my own method. In this particular instance the police obviously would not serve me, because you are not afraid of them and in all probability you are in their pay—am I right in supposing that you are one of Mr. T. X. Meredith’s accomplices!”
“I do not know Mr. T. X. Meredith,” she replied calmly, “and I am not in any way associated with the police.”
“Nevertheless,” he persisted, “you do not seem to be very scared of them and that removes any temptation I might have to place you in the hands of the law. Let me see,” he pursed his lips as he applied his mind to the problem.
She half sat, half stood, watching him without any evidence of apprehension, but with a heart which began to quake a little. For three months she had played her part and the strain had been greater than she had confessed to herself. Now the great moment had come and she had failed. That was the sickening, maddening thing about it all. It was not the fear of arrest or of conviction, which brought a sinking to her heart; it was the despair of failure, added to a sense of her helplessness against this man.
“If I had you arrested your name would appear in all the papers, of course,” he said, narrowly, “and your photograph would probably adorn the Sunday journals,” he added expectantly.
She laughed.
“That doesn’t appeal to me,” she said.
“I am afraid it doesn’t,” he replied, and strolled towards her as though to pass her on his way to the window. He was abreast of her when he suddenly swung round and catching her in his arms he caught her close to him. Before she could realise what he planned, he had stooped swiftly and kissed her full upon the mouth.
“If you scream, I shall kiss you again,” he said, “for I have sent the maid to buy some more stamps—to the General Post Office.”
“Let me go,” she gasped.
Now for the first time he saw the terror in her eyes, and there surged within him that mad sense of triumph, that intoxication of power which had been associated with the red letter days of his warped life.
“You’re afraid!” he bantered her, half whispering the words, “you’re afraid now, aren’t you? If you scream I shall kiss you again, do you hear?”
“For God’s sake, let me go,” she whispered.
He felt her shaking in his arms, and suddenly he released her with a little laugh, and she sank trembling from head to foot upon the chair by her desk.
“Now you’re going to tell me who sent you here,” he went on harshly, “and why you came. I never suspected you. I thought you were one of those strange creatures one meets in England, a gentlewoman who prefers working for her living to the more simple business of getting married. And all the time you were spying—clever—very clever!”
The girl was thinking rapidly. In five minutes Fisher would return. Somehow she had faith in Fisher’s ability and willingness to save her from a situation which she realized was fraught with the greatest danger to herself. She was horribly afraid. She knew this man far better than he suspected, realized the treachery and the unscrupulousness of him. She knew he would stop short of nothing, that he was without honour and without a single attribute of goodness.
He must have read her thoughts for he came nearer and stood over her.
“You needn’t shrink, my young friend,” he said with a little chuckle. “You are going to do just what I want you to do, and your first act will be to accompany me downstairs. Get up.”
He half lifted, half dragged her to her feet and led her from the room. They descended to the hall together and the girl spoke no word. Perhaps she hoped that she might wrench herself free and make her escape into the street, but in this she was disappointed. The grip about her arm was a grip of steel and she knew safety did not lie in that direction. She pulled back at the head of the stairs that led down to the kitchen.
“Where are you taking me?” she asked.
“I am going to put you into safe custody,” he said. “On the whole I think it is best that the police take this matter in hand and I shall lock you into my wine cellar and go out in search of a policeman.”
The big wooden door opened, revealing a second door and this Kara unbolted. She noticed that both doors were sheeted with steel, the outer on the inside, and the inner door on the outside. She had no time to make any further observations for Kara thrust her into the darkness. He switched on a light.
“I will not deny you that,” he said, pushing her back as she made a frantic attempt to escape. He swung the outer door to as she raised her voice in a piercing scream, and clapping his hand over her mouth held her tightly for a moment.
“I have warned you,” he hissed.
She saw his face distorted with rage. She saw Kara transfigured with devilish anger, saw that handsome, almost godlike countenance thrust into hers, flushed and seamed with malignity and a hatefulness beyond understanding and then her senses left her and she sank limp and swooning into his arms.
When she recovered consciousness she found herself lying on a plain stretcher bed. She sat up suddenly. Kara had gone and the door was closed. The cellar was dry and clean and its walls were enamelled white. Light was supplied by two electric lamps in the ceiling. There was a table and a chair and a small washstand, and air was evidently supplied through unseen ventilators. It was indeed a prison and no less, and in her first moments of panic she found herself wondering whether Kara had used this underground dungeon of his before for a similar purpose.
She examined the room carefully. At the farthermost end was another door and this she pushed gently at first and then vigorously without producing the slightest impression. She still had her bag, a small affair of black moire, which hung from her belt, in which was nothing more formidable than a penknife, a small bottle of smelling salts and a pair of scissors. The latter she had used for cutting out those paragraphs from the daily newspapers which referred to Kara’s movements.
They would make a formidable weapon, and wrapping her handkerchief round the handle to give it a better grip she placed it on the table within reach. She was dimly conscious all the time that she had heard something about this wine cellar—something which, if she could recollect it, would be of service to her.
Then in a flash she remembered that there was a lower cellar, which according to Mrs. Beale was never used and was bricked up. It was approached from the outside, down a circular flight of stairs. There might be a way out from that direction and would there not be some connection between the upper cellar and the lower!
She set to work to make a closer examination of the apartment.
The floor was of concrete, covered with a light rush matting. This she carefully rolled up, starting at the door. One half of the floor was uncovered without revealing the existence of any trap. She attempted to pull the table into the centre of the room, better to roll the matting, but found it fixed to the wall, and going down on her knees, she discovered that it had been fixed after the matting had been laid.
Obviously there was no need for the fixture and, she tapped the floor with her little knuckle. Her heart started racing. The sound her knocking gave forth was a hollow one. She sprang up, took her bag from the table, opened the little penknife and cut carefully through the thin rushes. She might have to replace the matting and it was necessary she should do her work tidily.
Soon the whole of the trap was revealed. There was an iron ring, which fitted flush with the top and which she pulled. The trap yielded and swung back as though there were a counterbalance at the other end, as indeed there was. She peered down. There was a dim light below—the reflection of a light in the distance. A flight of steps led down to the lower level and after a second’s hesitation she swung her legs over the cavity and began her descent.
She was in a cellar slightly smaller than that above her. The light she had seen came from an inner apartment which would be underneath the kitchen of the house. She made her way cautiously along, stepping on tip-toe. The first of the rooms she came to was well-furnished. There was a thick carpet on the floor, comfortable easy-chairs, a little bookcase well filled, and a reading lamp. This must be Kara’s underground study, where he kept his precious papers.
A smaller room gave from this and again it was doorless. She looked in and after her eyes had become accustomed to the darkness she saw that it was a bathroom handsomely fitted.
The room she was in was also without any light which came from the farthermost chamber. As the girl strode softly across the well-carpeted room she trod on something hard. She stooped and felt along the floor and her fingers encountered a thin steel chain. The girl was bewildered-almost panic-stricken. She shrunk back from the entrance of the inner room, fearful of what she would see. And then from the interior came a sound that made her tingle with horror.
It was a sound of a sigh, long and trembling. She set her teeth and strode through the doorway and stood for a moment staring with open eyes and mouth at what she saw.
“My God!” she breathed, “London. . . . in the twentieth century. . . !”
CHAPTER XI
Superintendent Mansus had a little office in Scotland Yard proper, which, he complained, was not so much a private bureau, as a waiting-room to which repaired every official of the police service who found time hanging on his hands. On the afternoon of Miss Holland’s surprising adventure, a plainclothes man of “D” Division brought to Mr. Mansus’s room a very scared domestic servant, voluble, tearful and agonizingly penitent. It was a mood not wholly unfamiliar to a police officer of twenty years experience and Mr. Mansus was not impressed.
“If you will kindly shut up,” he said, blending his natural politeness with his employment of the vernacular, “and if you will also answer a few questions I will save you a lot of trouble. You were Lady Bartholomew’s maid weren’t you?”
“Yes, sir,” sobbed the red-eyed Mary Ann.
“And you have been detected trying to pawn a gold bracelet, the property of Lady Bartholomew?”
The maid gulped, nodded and started breathlessly upon a recital of her wrongs.
“Yes, sir—but she practically gave it to me, sir, and I haven’t had my wages for two months, sir, and she can give that foreigner thousands and thousands of pounds at a time, sir, but her poor servants she can’t pay—no, she can’t. And if Sir William knew especially about my lady’s cards and about the snuffbox, what would he think, I wonder, and I’m going to have my rights, for if she can pay thousands to a swell like Mr. Kara she can pay me and—”
Mansus jerked his head.
“Take her down to the cells,” he said briefly, and they led her away, a wailing, woeful figure of amateur larcenist.
In three minutes Mansus was with T. X. and had reduced the girl’s incoherence to something like order.
“This is important,” said T. X.; “produce the Abigail.”
“The—?” asked the puzzled officer.
“The skivvy—slavey—hired help—get busy,” said T. X. impatiently.
They brought her to T. X. in a condition bordering upon collapse.
“Get her a cup of tea,” said the wise chief. “Sit down, Mary Ann, and forget all your troubles.”
“Oh, sir, I’ve never been in this position before,” she began, as she flopped into the chair they put for her.
“Then you’ve had a very tiring time,” said T. X. “Now listen—”
“I’ve been respectable—”
“Forget it!” said T. X., wearily. “Listen! If you’ll tell me the whole truth about Lady Bartholomew and the money she paid to Mr. Kara—”
“Two thousand pounds—two separate thousand and by all accounts-”
“If you will tell me the truth, I’ll compound a felony and let you go free.”
It was a long time before he could prevail upon her to clear her speech of the ego which insisted upon intruding. There were gaps in her narrative which he bridged. In the main it was a believable story. Lady Bartholomew had lost money and had borrowed from Kara. She had given as security, the snuffbox presented to her husband’s father, a doctor, by one of the Czars for services rendered, and was “all blue enamel and gold, and foreign words in diamonds.” On the question of the amount Lady Bartholomew had borrowed, Abigail was very vague. All that she knew was that my lady had paid back two thousand pounds and that she was still very distressed (“in a fit” was the phrase the girl used), because apparently Kara refused to restore the box.
There had evidently been terrible scenes in the Bartholomew menage, hysterics and what not, the principal breakdown having occurred when Belinda Mary came home from school in France.
“Miss Bartholomew is home then. Where is she?” asked T. X.
Here the girl was more vague than ever. She thought the young lady had gone back again, anyway Miss Belinda had been very much upset. Miss Belinda had seen Dr. Williams and advised that her mother should go away for a change.
“Miss Belinda seems to be a precocious young person,” said T. X. “Did she by any chance see Mr. Kara?”
“Oh, no,” explained the girl. “Miss Belinda was above that sort of person. Miss Belinda was a lady, if ever there was one.”
“And how old is this interesting young woman?” asked T. X. curiously.
“She is nineteen,” said the girl, and the Commissioner, who had pictured Belinda in short plaid frocks and long pigtails, and had moreover visualised her as a freckled little girl with thin legs and snub nose, was abashed.
He delivered a short lecture on the sacred rights of property, paid the girl the three months’ wages which were due to her—he had no doubt as to the legality of her claim—and dismissed her with instructions to go back to the house, pack her box and clear out.
After the girl had gone, T. X. sat down to consider the position. He might see Kara and since Kara had expressed his contrition and was probably in a more humble state of mind, he might make reparation. Then again he might not. Mansus was waiting and T. X. walked back with him to his little office.
“I hardly know what to make of it,” he said in despair.
“If you can give me Kara’s motive, sir, I can give you a solution,” said Mansus.
T. X. shook his head.
“That is exactly what I am unable to give you,” he said.
He perched himself on Mansus’s desk and lit a cigar.
“I have a good mind to go round and see him,” he said after a while.
“Why not telephone to him?” asked Mansus. “There is his ‘phone straight into his boudoir.”
He pointed to a small telephone in a corner of the room.
“Oh, he persuaded the Commissioner to run the wire, did he?” said T. X. interested, and walked over to the telephone.
He fingered the receiver for a little while and was about to take it off, but changed his mind.
“I think not,” he said, “I’ll go round and see him to-morrow. I don’t hope to succeed in extracting the confidence in the case of Lady Bartholomew, which he denied me over poor Lexman.”
“I suppose you’ll never give up hope of seeing Mr. Lexman again,” smiled Mansus, busily arranging a new blotting pad.
Before T. X. could answer there came a knock at the door, and a uniformed policeman, entered. He saluted T. X.
“They’ve just sent an urgent letter across from your office, sir. I said I thought you were here.”
He handed the missive to the Commissioner. T. X. took it and glanced at the typewritten address. It was marked “urgent” and “by hand.” He took up the thin, steel, paper-knife from the desk and slit open the envelope. The letter consisted of three or four pages of manuscript and, unlike the envelope, it was handwritten.
“My dear T. X.,” it began, and the handwriting was familiar.
Mansus, watching the Commissioner, saw the puzzled frown gather on his superior’s forehead, saw the eyebrows arch and the mouth open in astonishment, saw him hastily turn to the last page to read the signature and then:
“Howling apples!” gasped T. X. “It’s from John Lexman!”
His hand shook as he turned the closely written pages. The letter was dated that afternoon. There was no other address than “London.”
“My dear T. X.,” it began, “I do not doubt that this letter will give you a little shock, because most of my friends will have believed that I am gone beyond return. Fortunately or unfortunately that is not so. For myself I could wish—but I am not going to take a very gloomy view since I am genuinely pleased at the thought that I shall be meeting you again. Forgive this letter if it is incoherent but I have only this moment returned and am writing at the Charing Cross Hotel. I am not staying here, but I will let you have my address later. The crossing has been a very severe one so you must forgive me if my letter sounds a little disjointed. You will be sorry to hear that my dear wife is dead. She died abroad about six months ago. I do not wish to talk very much about it so you will forgive me if I do not tell you any more.
“My principal object in writing to you at the moment is an official one. I suppose I am still amenable to punishment and I have decided to surrender myself to the authorities to-night. You used to have a most excellent assistant in Superintendent Mansus, and if it is convenient to you, as I hope it will be, I will report myself to him at 10.15. At any rate, my dear T. X., I do not wish to mix you up in my affairs and if you will let me do this business through Mansus I shall be very much obliged to you.
“I know there is no great punishment awaiting me, because my pardon was apparently signed on the night before my escape. I shall not have much to tell you, because there is not much in the past two years that I would care to recall. We endured a great deal of unhappiness and death was very merciful when it took my beloved from me.
“Do you ever see Kara in these days?
“Will you tell Mansus to expect me at between ten and half-past, and if he will give instructions to the officer on duty in the hall I will come straight up to his room.
“With affectionate regards, my dear fellow, I am,
“Yours sincerely,
“JOHN LEXMAN.”
T. X. read the letter over twice and his eyes were troubled.
“Poor girl,” he said softly, and handed the letter to Mansus. “He evidently wants to see you because he is afraid of using my friendship to his advantage. I shall be here, nevertheless.”
“What will be the formality?” asked Mansus.
“There will be no formality,” said the other briskly. “I will secure the necessary pardon from the Home Secretary and in point of fact I have it already promised, in writing.”
He walked back to Whitehall, his mind fully occupied with the momentous events of the day. It was a raw February evening, sleet was falling in the street, a piercing easterly wind drove even through his thick overcoat. In such doorways as offered protection from the bitter elements the wreckage of humanity which clings to the West end of London, as the singed moth flutters about the flame that destroys it, were huddled for warmth.
T. X. was a man of vast human sympathies.
All his experience with the criminal world, all his disappointments, all his disillusions had failed to quench the pity for his unfortunate fellows. He made it a rule on such nights as these, that if, by chance, returning late to his office he should find such a shivering piece of jetsam sheltering in his own doorway, he would give him or her the price of a bed.
In his own quaint way he derived a certain speculative excitement from this practice. If the doorway was empty he regarded himself as a winner, if some one stood sheltered in the deep recess which is a feature of the old Georgian houses in this historic thoroughfare, he would lose to the extent of a shilling.
He peered forward through the semi-darkness as he neared the door of his offices.
“I’ve lost,” he said, and stripped his gloves preparatory to groping in his pocket for a coin.
Somebody was standing in the entrance, but it was obviously a very respectable somebody. A dumpy, motherly somebody in a seal-skin coat and a preposterous bonnet.
“Hullo,” said T. X. in surprise, “are you trying to get in here?”
“I want to see Mr. Meredith,” said the visitor, in the mincing affected tones of one who excused the vulgar source of her prosperity by frequently reiterated claims to having seen better days.
“Your longing shall be gratified,” said T. X. gravely.
He unlocked the heavy door, passed through the uncarpeted passage—there are no frills on Government offices—and led the way up the stairs to the suite on the first floor which constituted his bureau.
He switched on all the lights and surveyed his visitor, a comfortable person of the landlady type.
“A good sort,” thought T. X., “but somewhat overweighted with lorgnettes and seal-skin.”
“You will pardon my coming to see you at this hour of the night,” she began deprecatingly, “but as my dear father used to say, ‘Hopi soit qui mal y pense.’”
“Your dear father being in the garter business?” suggested T. X. humorously. “Won’t you sit down, Mrs. –”
“Mrs. Cassley,” beamed the lady as she seated herself. “He was in the paper hanging business. But needs must, when the devil drives, as the saying goes.”
“What particular devil is driving you, Mrs. Cassley?” asked T. X., somewhat at a loss to understand the object of this visit.
“I may be doing wrong,” began the lady, pursing her lips, “and two blacks will never make a white.”
“And all that glitters is not gold,” suggested T. X. a little wearily. “Will you please tell me your business, Mrs. Cassley? I am a very hungry man.”
“Well, it’s like this, sir,” said Mrs. Cassley, dropping her erudition, and coming down to bedrock homeliness; “I’ve got a young lady stopping with me, as respectable a gel as I’ve had to deal with. And I know what respectability is, I might tell you, for I’ve taken professional boarders and I have been housekeeper to a doctor.”
“You are well qualified to speak,” said T. X. with a smile. “And what about this particular young lady of yours! By the way what is your address?”
“86a Marylebone Road,” said the lady.
T. X. sat up.
“Yes?” he said quickly. “What about your young lady?”
“She works as far as I can understand,” said the loquacious landlady, “with a certain Mr. Kara in the typewriting line. She came to me four months ago.”
“Never mind when she came to you,” said T. X. impatiently. “Have you a message from the lady?”
“Well, it’s like this, sir,” said Mrs. Cassley, leaning forward confidentially and speaking in the hollow tone which she had decided should accompany any revelation to a police officer, “this young lady said to me, ‘If I don’t come any night by 8 o’clock you must go to T. X. and tell him—‘!”
She paused dramatically.
“Yes, yes,” said T. X. quickly, “for heaven’s sake go on, woman.”
“‘Tell him,’” said Mrs. Cassley, “‘that Belinda Mary—‘”
He sprang to his feet.
“Belinda Mary!” he breathed, “Belinda Mary!” In a flash he saw it all. This girl with a knowledge of modern Greek, who was working in Kara’s house, was there for a purpose. Kara had something of her mother’s, something that was vital and which he would not part with, and she had adopted this method of securing that some thing. Mrs. Cassley was prattling on, but her voice was merely a haze of sound to him. It brought a strange glow to his heart that Belinda Mary should have thought of him.
“Only as a policeman, of course,” said the still, small voice of his official self. “Perhaps!” said the human T. X., defiantly.
He got on the telephone to Mansus and gave a few instructions.
“You stay here,” he ordered the astounded Mrs. Cassley; “I am going to make a few investigations.”
Kara was at home, but was in bed. T. X. remembered that this extraordinary man invariably went to bed early and that it was his practice to receive visitors in this guarded room of his. He was admitted almost at once and found Kara in his silk dressing-gown lying on the bed smoking. The heat of the room was unbearable even on that bleak February night.
“This is a pleasant surprise,” said Kara, sitting up; “I hope you don’t mind my dishabille.”
T. X. came straight to the point.
“Where is Miss Holland!” he asked.
“Miss Holland?” Kara’s eyebrows advertised his astonishment. “What an extraordinary question to ask me, my dear man! At her home, or at the theatre or in a cinema palace—I don’t know how these people employ their evenings.”
“She is not at home,” said T. X., “and I have reason to believe that she has not left this house.”
“What a suspicious person you are, Mr. Meredith!” Kara rang the bell and Fisher came in with a cup of coffee on a tray.
“Fisher,” drawled Kara. “Mr. Meredith is anxious to know where Miss Holland is. Will you be good enough to tell him, you know more about her movements than I do.”
“As far as I know, sir,” said Fisher deferentially, “she left the house about 5.30, her usual hour. She sent me out a little before five on a message and when I came back her hat and her coat had gone, so I presume she had gone also.”
“Did you see her go?” asked T. X.
The man shook his head.
“No, sir, I very seldom see the lady come or go. There has been no restrictions placed upon the young lady and she has been at liberty to move about as she likes. I think I am correct in saying that, sir,” he turned to Kara.
Kara nodded.
“You will probably find her at home.”
He shook his finger waggishly at T. X.
“What a dog you are,” he jibed, “I ought to keep the beauties of my household veiled, as we do in the East, and especially when I have a susceptible policeman wandering at large.”
T. X. gave jest for jest. There was nothing to be gained by making trouble here. After a few amiable commonplaces he took his departure. He found Mrs. Cassley being entertained by Mansus with a wholly fictitious description of the famous criminals he had arrested.
“I can only suggest that you go home,” said T. X. “I will send a police officer with you to report to me, but in all probability you will find the lady has returned. She may have had a difficulty in getting a bus on a night like this.”
A detective was summoned from Scotland Yard and accompanied by him Mrs. Cassley returned to her domicile with a certain importance. T. X. looked at his watch. It was a quarter to ten.
“Whatever happens, I must see old Lexman,” he said. “Tell the best men we’ve got in the department to stand by for eventualities. This is going to be one of my busy days.”
