them."The dangerous ones are nearly at the top of the second storey. There'sno danger on the first floor."
"All right, sir," replied the man. "I'll be wary, you bet!" and weclimbed to the first floor, the rooms of which, to our surprise, wereall empty, devoid of any furniture save two or three broken chairs. Inone room was a cupboard, which, however, was locked.
Again we turned to the stairs, Edwards and his companion ascending eachstair slowly and trying the one higher with their hands. They werecovered with new carpet of art green, different to the first flight,which were covered in red.
When a little more than half-way up to the top landing, Edwards suddenlyexclaimed,--
"Here it is, sir!" and instantly we ascended to his side.
Kneeling on the stairs, he pressed his hands on the step above,whereupon that portion of the stairway up to the landing swung forwardupon a hinge, disclosing a black abyss beneath.
I looked into it and shuddered. Even Pickering himself could notrestrain an expression of surprise and horror when he realised howcunningly planned was that death-trap. The first six stairs from thetop seemed to hang upon hinges from the landing. Therefore with theweight of a person upon them they would fall forward and pitch theunfortunate victim backwards before he could grasp the handrail, causinghim to fall into the pit below.
"Well," remarked Pickering, amazed, as he pushed open the stairs andpeered into the dark blackness below, "of all the devilish contrivancesI've ever seen in my twenty-one years' experience in London, this is oneof the most simple and yet the most ingenious and most fatal?"
"No doubt there's a secret way to render the stairs secure," I remarked.
"No doubt, but as we don't know it, Edwards, one of you had better godown and get something to lay over the stairs--a piece of board, atable--anything that's long enough. We don't want to be pitched downthere ourselves."
"No, sir," remarked Edwards' companion, whose name was Marvin. "Iwouldn't like to be, for one. But I daresay lots of 'em have gone downthere at times."
"Most probably," snapped the inspector, dismissing the man at once toget the board.
"Bring up the jemmy as well," he added, over the banisters. "We maywant it."
A few minutes later the two men brought up a long oak settle from thehall, and bridging the fatal gulf, held it in position, while we passedover, not, however, without difficulty, as the incline was so great.Then when we were over we held it while they also scrambled up.
To the left was a closed door--the room from which had come the sound ofEric's voice on that fatal night. I recognised it in a moment, for itwas pale green, picked out in a darker shade.
I opened it, and Pickering shone his lamp within. The blinds were up,but Edwards rushed and pulled them down. Then, on glancing round, I sawit was a pretty well-furnished room, another sitting-room, quitedifferent from those below, as it was decorated in modern taste, withfurniture covered with pale yellow silk and comfortable easy chairs, asthough its owner were fond of luxury. The odour of stale cigars stillhung in the curtains. Perhaps it was the vampire's den, a place wherehe could at all events be safe from intrusion with those fatal stairsbetween him and the street.
I explained my theory to the inspector, and he was inclined to agreewith me.
Upon the floor lay a copy of an evening paper nearly a month old, whilethe London dust over everything told us that at least it had not beenoccupied recently.
In that room poor Eric had defied his captors. I looked eagerly aroundfor any traces of him. Yes. My eye fell upon one object--a silvercigarette-case that I had given him two years ago!
The tell-tale object was lying upon the mantelshelf unheeded, tossedthere, perhaps, on the night of the crime.
I handed it to Pickering and told him the truth.
"A very valuable piece of evidence, sir," was the inspector's reply,placing it in his pocket. "We shall get at the bottom of the affairnow, depend upon it. The only thing is, we mustn't act too eagerly. Wemust have them all--or none; that's my opinion."
Then, with his two men, he methodically searched the room, theycarefully replacing everything as they found it in a manner which showedthem to be expert investigators of crime. Indeed, while Pickering wasan inspector of police, the two men were sergeants of the branch of theCriminal Investigation Department attached to the station. Theyexamined quite a heterogeneous collection of things--the usual thingsone finds in a man's rooms. From a drawer in a kind of sideboard I tookout a quantity of letters, beneath which I found a woman's necklace, amagnificent antique thing in diamonds and emeralds, which had apparentlybeen hurriedly concealed there, and perhaps forgotten.
Pickering took it in his hand and examined it close to his lamp.
"Real, without a doubt, and a costly one, too! Been taken off some richwoman, perhaps. See! the snap has been broken. Perhaps they are afraidto get rid of it at once, so are keeping it. For the present let's putit back."
As I replaced it I saw in the corner of the drawer a ring--a gold onewith an engraved amethyst. This I at once recognised as poor Eric'ssignet ring! Concealed among papers, pamphlets, string, medicinebottles and other odds and ends, were other articles of jewellery mostlycostly, as well as several beautiful ropes of pearls.
Were they, we wondered, the spoils of the dead? What had been the fateof Eric Domville? Had he been entrapped there, despoiled, as others hadbeen, and then allowed to descend those fatal stairs to his doom?
That was Pickering's opinion, just as it was mine.
I longed to be allowed time to inspect the few letters beneath which theemerald necklace had been concealed, but Pickering urged me on, sayingthat we had yet much to do before morning.
So we entered the other rooms leading from the landing, but all weredisappointing--all save one.
The door was opposite that wherein Eric had faced his enemies, and whenwe opened it we saw that it was a dirty faded place which had once beena bedroom, but there was now neither bedstead nor bedding. Upon thefloor was an old drab threadbare carpet, in the centre of which was alarge dark stain.
"Look!" I cried, pointing to it and bending to examine it more closely.
"Yes, I see," remarked the inspector, directing his lamp full upon it."That's blood, sir--blood without the least doubt!"
"Blood!" I gasped. "Then Domville was probably invited in here andstruck down by those fiends--the brutes!"
Edwards went on his knees, and by the aid of his lamp examined the stainmore carefully, touching it with his fingers.
"It's hardly quite dry, even now," he remarked. "It's soaked right in--through the boards, probably."
I stood appalled at the sight of that gruesome evidence of a crime. Iwas not familiar with such revolting sights, as were my companions.
How, I wondered, had Eric been struck down? What motive had Sybil'sfriend in reporting that he was alive and in Paris, when he was not?
Pickering, in the meanwhile, made a tour of the room. From a chair thathad recently been broken he concluded that the person attacked haddefended himself with it desperately, while there was a great rent inone of the dirty lace curtains that hung at the window, and it wasslightly blood-stained, as though it had got caught in the struggle.
The last room we examined, which lay at the rear of the house, presentedanother peculiar feature, inasmuch as it was entirely bare save a table,a chair and a meagre bed, and it showed signs of rather recentoccupation. Beside the grate was a cooking-pot, while on the table adirty plate, a jug and a knife showed that its occupant had cooked hisown food.
Pickering made a tour of the place, throwing the light of his lanterninto every corner, examining the plate and taking up some articles ofman's clothing that lay in confusion upon the bed. Then suddenly hestopped, exclaiming,--
"Why, somebody's been kept a prisoner here! Look at the bars before thewindow, and see, the door is covered with sheet-iron and strengthened.The bolts, too, show that whoever was put in here couldn't escape. Thisplace is a p
rison, that's evident," and taking up a piece of hard, stalebread from the table he added, "and this is the remains of theprisoner's last meal. Where is he now, I wonder?"
"Down below," suggested the detective Edwards.
"I fear so," the inspector said, and taking me to the window showed mehow it only looked out upon the roof of the next house and in such aposition that the shouts of anyone confined there would never be heard.
"They probably kept their victims here to extort money, and then whenthey had drained them dry they gave them their liberty. They wentdownstairs," he added grimly, "but they never gained the street."
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT.
BRINGS US FACE TO FACE.
Pickering was essentially a man of action.
"We must go down that hole and explore," he said determinedly. "We mustknow the whole of the secrets of this place before we go further.Edwards, just slip round to the station and get that rope-ladder we usedin the Charlotte Street affair. Bring more rope, as it may be tooshort. And bring P.C. Horton with you. Tell him to take his revolver.Look sharp."
"Very well, sir," replied the man, who clambered over the settle anddown the stairs, leaving us there to await his return.
Time passed slowly in that dark, gruesome house, and at each noise wehalted breathlessly in expectation of the return of Parham or one of hisfriends.
Returning to the room wherein Eric Domville had so gallantly defied hisenemies, we resumed our search, and from beneath the couch the constabledrew forth the square brown-paper parcel which Winsloe had obtained fromthe house called Keymer, and handed over to Parham.
Pickering, in a trice, cut the string with his pocket-knife, and withinfound a small square wooden box nailed down. The jemmy soon forced itopen, when there was revealed a large packet of papers neatly tied withpink tape, which on being opened showed that they were a quantity ofnegotiable foreign securities--mostly French.
"The proceeds of some robbery, most certainly," declared Pickering,examining one after the other and inquiring of me their true character,he being ignorant of French.
"I expect the intention is to negotiate them in the City," I remarkedafter I had been through them and roughly calculated that their valuewas about twenty thousand pounds.
"Yes. We'll put them back and see who returns to fetch them. There'sevidently a widespread conspiracy here, and it is fortunate, Mr Hughes,that you've been able at last to fix the house. By Jove!" the inspectoradded with a smile, "we ourselves couldn't have done better--indeed, wecouldn't have done as well as you did."
"I only hope that we shall discover what has become of my friendDomville," I said. "I intend that his death shall not go unavenged. Hewas in this room, I'll swear to that. I'd know his voice among tenthousand."
"We shall see," remarked the officer, confidently. "First let usexplore and discover how they got rid of their victims. I only hopenobody will return while we are below. If they do, Horton and Marvinwill arrest them. We'll take Edwards down with us."
While the constable Marvin repacked the precious box to replace it,Pickering and myself went to the drawer and looked over the letters.Many of them were unimportant and incomprehensible, until one I openedwritten upon blue-grey notepaper bearing the heading: "Harewolde Abbey,Herefordshire." It was in the well-known handwriting of Sybil Burnet!Amazed, I read eagerly as follows:--
"Yes. Fred Kinghorne is here. He is an American, and beyond theMarstons has, I believe, no friends in England. He is an excellentbridge player and has won heavily this week. He has told me that he isengaged to a girl named Appleton, daughter of a Wall Street broker, andthat she and her mother are to meet him in Naples on the twentieth, fora tour in Italy. He leaves here next Saturday, and will stay at theCecil for ten days prior to leaving for Italy. He is evidently verywell off, and one of the reasons he is in England is to buy somejewellery as a wedding present for his bride. The Marstons tell me thathe is the son of old Jacob Kinghorne, the great Californian financier.I hope this information will satisfy you.--S."
Harewolde, as all the world knows, was one of the centres of the smartset. The Marstons entertained the royalties frequently, and there wererumours of bridge parties and high stakes. Why had Sybil given thiscurious information? Had the young man Kinghorne been marked down asone of the victims and enticed to that fatal house?
There was no envelope, and the commencement of the letter was abrupt, asthough it had been enclosed with some unsuspicious communication.
Having read it, I laid it down without comment, for it was my lastdesire to incriminate the poor unhappy woman, who, shorn of herbrilliancy, was now leading such a strange and lowly life in that dullSouth London street.
Yet could it be possible that she had acted for these blackguards astheir secret agent in society?
The suggestion held me stupefied.
At last Edwards ascended the stairs with Horton and another constable inplain clothes, and scrambled across the settle to where we stood. Hecarried in his hand a strong ladder of silken rope--which Pickeringincidentally remarked had once been the property of Crisp, the notableHampstead burglar--together with another lantern, a ball of string and alength of stout rope.
Marvin and Edwards recrossed the improvised bridge, while Pickering,Horton and myself remained upon the landing. Then, when we drew thesettle away the two men pressed upon the stairs, causing the whole tomove forward upon the hinges at the edge of the landing and disclosingthe black abyss. As soon as the pressure was released, however, thestairs swung back into their place again, there being either a spring ora counter-balancing weight beneath.
This was the first difficulty that faced us, but it was soon overcome byinserting the settle when the stairs were pushed apart, thus keepingthem open. To the stout oak pillar which formed the head of thebanisters Pickering fixed the rope-ladder firmly, and with Marvin triedits strength.
"I'll go down first, sir," volunteered Edwards. "You've got thelantern. Will you light it and let it down by the string after me?"
So with all of us breathlessly excited the silken ladder was thrownacross to Edwards, whose round face beamed at the project ofsubterranean exploration. Then, when the lamp was lit and tied upon thestring, he put his foot into the ladder, swung himself over the edge ofthe stairs and descended into the darkness, Pickering lowering the lampafter him.
We stood peering down at his descending figure, but could discern butlittle save the glimmering of the light and the slow swinging of theladder, like a pendulum.
"Great Moses!" we heard him ejaculate in amazement.
Yet down, down, down he went until it became apparent that he must havereached the end of the ladder, and now be sliding down the extra lengthof rope which Pickering had attached.
"All right, sir!" came up his voice, sounding cavernous from the pitchdarkness. "It's a jolly funny place down here, an' no mistake. Willyou come down? I'm releasing the lantern. Send down another, please.We'll want it."
Pickering hauled in the string, attached Marvin's bull's-eye to it, andlet it down again at once. The pit was of great depth, as shown by thelength of cord. Then with an agility which would have done credit to amuch younger man, he swung himself over on to the ladder.
"If you'd like to come down, Mr Hughes, you can follow me," heexclaimed, as he disappeared into the darkness. "Horton, hold yourlight over me. You two stay here. If anybody enters the place, arrestthem quickly."
"Very well, sir," answered the man Horton, and the inspector went deeperdown until only the trembling of the ladder betokened his presencethere.
"All right, Mr Hughes. Come down, but be careful," he cried uppresently, his voice sounding far away. "You'll have to slide down therope for the last twelve feet or so. Cling tight, and you'll be allright."
I grasped the ladder, placed my foot into the first loop, and then withthe light held over me, went down, down, first into a place which seemedlarge and cavernous, and presently down a kind of circular well withblack slimy w
alls which seemed to descend into the very bowels of theearth.
Below I could hear the sound of rushing waters, but above them was theinspector's encouraging voice, crying, "All right. Now then, take therope in your legs and slip straight down."
I did so, and a moment later found myself up to my knees in an icy coldstream, which swept and gurgled about me.
Pickering and his assistant stood at my side, their lamps shining uponthe dark subterranean flood.
"Is this the place you remember?" asked the inspector, shining hisbull's-eye around and revealing that we were at the bottom of a kind ofcircular well which had on either side two low arches or culverts. Fromthe right the water rushed in with a swirling current, and by theopposite culvert it rushed out, gurgling and filling the arch almost toits keystone. I saw that all the black slimy masonry was of long flatstones--a relic of ancient London it seemed to be.
"This isn't the place where I found myself," I said, much surprised.
"No, I suppose not," remarked the inspector. "This is fresh water, froma spring somewhere, and through that ancient culvert there's probably acommunication with the main sewer. When you fell, you were swept downthere and out into the main sewer at once--like a good many others whohave come down here. It's an awful death-trap. Look up there," and heshone his lamp above my head.
"Don't you see that a bar of iron has been driven into the wall--anddriven there recently, too, or it would have rusted away long ago inthis