Whatsoever a Man Soweth
Again and again I tried to find the gruesome place, but in vain. Not a street nor an alley in the neighbourhood of Regent Street I left unexplored, yet for the life of me I could not again recognise the house. The only plan, I decided, was to follow Parham, who would one day go there, without a doubt.
I called on Mrs Parham at Sydenham Hill, and found that her husband was still absent – in India, she believed. Miss O’Hara, however, remained with her. What connection had the girl with those malefactors? I tried to discern. At all events, she knew their cipher, and they also feared her, as shown by their actions on that dark night in Dean’s Yard.
My own idea was that Parham was still away in the country. Or, if he were in London, he never went near Winsloe. The police were in search of him, as admitted by the inspector at Sydenham, therefore he might at any moment be arrested. But before he fell into the hands of the police I was determined to fathom the secret of that house of mystery wherein I had so nearly lost my life.
For Tibbie’s personal safety I was now in constant and deep anxiety. They were desperate and would hesitate at nothing in order to secure their own ends. The ingenuity of the plot to seize her in Dean’s Yard was sufficient evidence of that. Fortunately, however, Tibbie had not seen my cipher advertisements.
Another week passed, and my pretended wife had quite settled down again amid her humble surroundings. It amused me sometimes to see the girl, of whose beauty half London had raved, with the sleeves of her cotton blouse turned up, making a pudding, or kneeling before the grate and applying blacklead with a brush. I, too, helped her to do the housework, and more than once scrubbed down the table or cleaned the windows. Frequently we worked in all seriousness, but at times we were compelled to laugh at each other’s unusual occupation.
And when I looked steadily into those fine, wide-open eyes, I wondered what great secret was hidden there.
Time after time I tried to learn more of Arthur Rumbold, but she would tell me nothing.
In fear that the fact of her disappearance might find its way into the papers, she wrote another reassuring letter to her mother, telling her that she was well and that one day ere long she would return. This I sent to a friend, a college chum, who was wintering in Cairo, and it was posted from there. Jack naturally sent out a man to Egypt to try and find her; and in the meantime we allayed all fears that she had met with foul play.
Days and weeks went on. In the security of those obscure apartments in Neate Street, that mean thoroughfare which by day resounded with the cries of itinerant costermongers, and at evening was the playground of crowds of children, Sybil remained patient, yet anxious. Mrs Williams – who, by the way, had a habit of speaking of her husband as her “old man” – was a kind, motherly soul, who did her best to keep her company during my absences, and who performed little services for her without thought of payment or reward. The occupation of compositor accounted not only for my absence each night during the week, but on Sunday nights also – to prepare Monday morning’s paper, I explained.
I told everybody that I worked in Fleet Street, but never satisfied them as to which office employed me. There were hundreds of compositors living in the neighbourhood, and if I made a false statement it would at once be detected. With Williams I was friendly, and we often had a glass together and a pipe.
Our life in Camberwell was surely the strangest ever led by man and woman. Before those who knew us I was compelled to call her “Molly,” while she addressed me as “Willie,” just as though I were her husband.
A thousand times I asked her the real reason of that masquerade, but she steadfastly declined to tell me.
“You may be able to save me,” was all the information she would vouchsafe.
Darkness fell early, for it was early in February, and each night I stole forth from the Caledonian Hotel on my tour of vigilance. The hotel people did not think it strange that I was a working-man. It was a quiet, comfortable place. I paid well, and was friendly with the hall-porter.
With the faithful Budd’s assistance – for he was friendly with Winsloe’s valet – I knew almost as much of the fellow’s movements as he did himself. I dogged his footsteps everywhere. Once he went down to Sydenham Hill, called upon Mrs Parham, and remained there about an hour while I waited outside in the quiet suburban road. When he emerged he was carrying a square parcel packed in brown paper, and this he conveyed back to Victoria, and afterwards took a cab to his own chambers.
He had not been there more than a quarter of an hour, when along King Street came a figure that I at once recognised as that of the man I most wanted to meet – John Parham himself.
I drew back and crossed the road, watching him enter Winsloe’s chambers, of which he apparently had a latchkey.
Then I waited, for I meant, at all hazards, to track the fellow to his hiding-place, and to discover the true identity of the house where I had been so ingeniously entrapped.
At last he emerged carrying the square packet which his friend had obtained at Sydenham, and behind him also came Winsloe. They walked across St. James’s Square and up York Street to the Trocadero, where, after having a drink together, they parted, Winsloe going along Coventry Street, while his companion, with the packet in his hand, remained on the pavement in Shaftesbury Avenue, apparently undecided which direction to take.
I was standing in the doorway of the Café Monico opposite, watching him keenly, and saw that he was evidently well known at the Trocadero, for the gold-laced hall-porter saluted him and wished him good-evening.
A few moments later he got into a cab and drove away, while in a few seconds I had entered another cab and was following him. We went up Shaftesbury Avenue, turning into Dean Street and thus reaching Oxford Street opposite Rathbone Place, where he alighted, looked around as though to satisfy himself that he was not followed, and walked on at a rapid pace up Rathbone Place, afterwards turning into many smaller thoroughfares with which I was unacquainted. Once he turned, and I feared that he had detected me, therefore I crossed the road and ascended the steps of a house, where I pretended to ring the door-bell.
He glanced back again, and finding that he was not being followed increased his pace and turned the corner. I was after him in an instant, and still followed him at a respectable distance until after he had turned several corners and was walking up a quiet, rather ill-lit street of dark old-fashioned houses, he glanced up and down and then suddenly disappeared into one of the door-ways. My quick eyes noted the house and then, five minutes afterwards, I walked quickly past the place.
In a moment I recognised the doorway as that of the house with the fatal stairs!
Returning, on the opposite side of the road, I saw that the place was in total darkness, yet outwardly it was in no way different to its neighbours, with the usual flight of steps leading to the front door, the deep basement, and the high iron railings still bearing before the door the old extinguishers used by the ink-men in the early days of last century. I recognised the house by those extinguishers. The blinds had not been lowered, therefore I conjectured that the place was unoccupied.
The street was, I found, called Clipstone Street, and it lay between Cleveland Street and Great Portland Street, in quite a different direction than that in which I had imagined it to be.
After a quarter of an hour Parham emerged without his parcel, closed the door behind him, and walked on to Portland Place, where, from the stand outside the Langham, he took a cab to Lyric Chambers, in Whitcomb Street, opposite Leicester Square, where I discovered he had his abode.
My heart beat wildly, for I knew that I was now on the verge of a discovery. I had gained knowledge that placed the assassins of Eric Domville in my hands.
I lost not a moment. At the Tottenham Court Road Police Station I was fortunate in finding Inspector Pickering on duty, and he at once recognised me as the hero of that strange subterranean adventure.
As soon as I told him I had discovered the mysterious house he was, in an instant, on the alert, and calling two plain-clothes men announced his intention of going with me at once to Clipstone Street to make investigations.
“Better take some tools with you, Edwards, to open the door, and a lantern, each of you,” he said to them. Then turning to me, he added, —
“If what we suspect is true, sir, there’s been some funny goings-on in that house. But we shall see.”
He took a revolver from his desk and placed it in his pocket, and afterwards exchanged his uniform coat for a dark tweed jacket in order not to attract attention in the neighbourhood.
Then we all four went forth to ascertain the truth.
Chapter Twenty Seven.
The House of Doom
On arrival at Clipstone Street our first inquiry was to ascertain whether the place was inhabited.
While we waited around the corner in Great Portland Street, one of Pickering’s men approached and rang the bell, but though he repeated the summons several times, there was no response. Then, with easy agility, he climbed over the railings and disappeared into the area.
Leaving the second man to give us warning if we were noticed, Pickering and myself sauntered along to the house.
It was nearly eleven o’clock, and there were few passers-by, yet we did not wish to be discovered, for our investigations were to be made strictly in secret, prior to the police taking action.
Was I acting judiciously, I wondered? Would the revelation I had made reflect upon Sybil herself? Would those men who used that house hurl against her a terrible and relentless vendetta?
Whether wisely or unwisely, however, I had instituted the inquiry, and could not now draw back.
The inspector himself took the small bag containing a serviceable-looking housebreaker’s jemmy and other tools, and as we came to the area handed it down to the man below. Then both of us scrambled over the locked gate and descended the steps to the basement door by which it had been decided to enter.
The plain-clothes man was something of a mechanic, I could see, for he was soon at work upon the lock, yet although he tried for a full quarter of an hour to open the door, it resisted all his efforts.
“It’s bolted,” he declared at last, wiping the perspiration from his brow. “We must try the front door. That’s no doubt only on the latch. If we force this they’ll know we’ve been here, while if we force the latch we can put that right again before we leave.”
“Very well, Edwards,” was the inspector’s reply. “Go up alone and do it. It won’t do for us both to be up with you. Force the latch, and let us trust to luck to be able to put it right again. We’ll have to lay a trap here – of that I feel sure.”
The man ascended to the door above us, but scarcely had he done so when we heard the hoarse cry of “Star– extrar spe-shall!” from the further end of the street – the pre-arranged signal warning us of someone approaching.
Edwards therefore slipped down the steps and walked in the opposite direction until the two men who had entered the street had passed. Then Edwards sprang up the steps again, and after trying the lock with a number of keys we suddenly heard a low crack, and then there was silence.
“All right,” he whispered to us over the railings, and a minute later we were standing inside the dark hall of the house wherein I had so nearly lost my life. Edwards closed the door behind us noiselessly, and we were compelled to grope forward in the pitch darkness, for the inspector deemed it wise to draw down the blinds before lighting our lanterns, for fear our movements should attract notice from without.
Edwards entered the front room on the right, stumbling over some furniture, and pulled down the dark holland blind, while a moment later a rapping on the front door announced the arrival of the man who had been watching to cover our movements.
The policemen’s lanterns, when lit, revealed an old-fashioned room furnished solidly in leather – a dining-room, though there were no evidences of it having been recently used. Behind it, entered by folding doors, was another sitting-room with heavy well-worn furniture covered with old-fashioned horsehair. In the room was a modern roll-top writing-table, the drawers of which Pickering reserved for future investigation.
“Be careful of the stairs,” I said, as Edwards started to ascend them. “The dangerous ones are nearly at the top of the second storey. There’s no danger on the first floor.”
“All right, sir,” replied the man. “I’ll be wary, you bet!” and we climbed to the first floor, the rooms of which, to our surprise, were all empty, devoid of any furniture save two or three broken chairs. In one room was a cupboard, which, however, was locked.
Again we turned to the stairs, Edwards and his companion ascending each stair slowly and trying the one higher with their hands. They were covered 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 suddenly exclaimed, —
“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 forward upon a hinge, disclosing a black abyss beneath.
I looked into it and shuddered. Even Pickering himself could not restrain an expression of surprise and horror when he realised how cunningly planned was that death-trap. The first six stairs from the top seemed to hang upon hinges from the landing. Therefore with the weight of a person upon them they would fall forward and pitch the unfortunate victim backwards before he could grasp the handrail, causing him to fall into the pit below.
“Well,” remarked Pickering, amazed, as he pushed open the stairs and peered into the dark blackness below, “of all the devilish contrivances I’ve ever seen in my twenty-one years’ experience in London, this is one of 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 go down and get something to lay over the stairs – a piece of board, a table – anything that’s long enough. We don’t want to be pitched down there ourselves.”
“No, sir,” remarked Edwards’ companion, whose name was Marvin. “I wouldn’t like to be, for one. But I daresay lots of ’em have gone down there at times.”
“Most probably,” snapped the inspector, dismissing the man at once to get the board.
“Bring up the jemmy as well,” he added, over the banisters. “We may want it.”
A few minutes later the two men brought up a long oak settle from the hall, and bridging the fatal gulf, held it in position, while we passed over, 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 of Eric’s voice on that fatal night. I recognised it in a moment, for it was 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 saw it was a pretty well-furnished room, another sitting-room, quite different from those below, as it was decorated in modern taste, with furniture covered with pale yellow silk and comfortable easy chairs, as though its owner were fond of luxury. The odour of stale cigars still hung in the curtains. Perhaps it was the vampire’s den, a place where he could at all events be safe from intrusion with those fatal stairs between him and the street.
I explained my theory to the inspector, and he was inclined to agree with me.
Upon the floor lay a copy of an evening paper nearly a month old, while the London dust over everything told us that at least it had not been occupied recently.
In that room poor Eric had defied his captors. I looked eagerly around for any traces of him. Yes. My eye fell upon one object – a silver cigarette-case that I had given him two years ago!
The tell-tale object was lying upon the mantelshelf unheeded, tossed there, 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 affair now, depend upon it. The only thing is, we mustn’t act too eagerly. We must have them all – or none; that’s my opinion.”
Then, with his two men, he methodically searched the room, they carefully replacing everything as they found it in a manner which showed them to be expert investigators of crime. Indeed, while Pickering was an inspector of police, the two men were sergeants of the branch of the Criminal Investigation Department attached to the station. They examined quite a heterogeneous collection of things – the usual things one finds in a man’s rooms. From a drawer in a kind of sideboard I took out a quantity of letters, beneath which I found a woman’s necklace, a magnificent antique thing in diamonds and emeralds, which had apparently been 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 rich woman, perhaps. See! the snap has been broken. Perhaps they are afraid to get rid of it at once, so are keeping it. For the present let’s put it back.”
As I replaced it I saw in the corner of the drawer a ring – a gold one with an engraved amethyst. This I at once recognised as poor Eric’s signet ring! Concealed among papers, pamphlets, string, medicine bottles and other odds and ends, were other articles of jewellery mostly costly, as well as several beautiful ropes of pearls.
Were they, we wondered, the spoils of the dead? What had been the fate of Eric Domville? Had he been entrapped there, despoiled, as others had been, 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 the emerald necklace had been concealed, but Pickering urged me on, saying that we had yet much to do before morning.
So we entered the other rooms leading from the landing, but all were disappointing – all save one.
The door was opposite that wherein Eric had faced his enemies, and when we opened it we saw that it was a dirty faded place which had once been a bedroom, but there was now neither bedstead nor bedding. Upon the floor was an old drab threadbare carpet, in the centre of which was a large 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 and struck down by those fiends – the brutes!”
Edwards went on his knees, and by the aid of his lamp examined the stain more 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. I was not familiar with such revolting sights, as were my companions.
How, I wondered, had Eric been struck down? What motive had Sybil’s friend 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 that had recently been broken he concluded that the person attacked had defended himself with it desperately, while there was a great rent in one of the dirty lace curtains that hung at the window, and it was slightly blood-stained, as though it had got caught in the struggle.
The last room we examined, which lay at the rear of the house, presented another peculiar feature, inasmuch as it was entirely bare save a table, a chair and a meagre bed, and it showed signs of rather recent occupation. Beside the grate was a cooking-pot, while on the table a dirty plate, a jug and a knife showed that its occupant had cooked his own food.
Pickering made a tour of the place, throwing the light of his lantern into every corner, examining the plate and taking up some articles of man’s clothing that lay in confusion upon the bed. Then suddenly he stopped, exclaiming, —
“Why, somebody’s been kept a prisoner here! Look at the bars before the window, and see, the door is covered with sheet-iron and strengthened. The bolts, too, show that whoever was put in here couldn’t escape. This place is a prison, that’s evident,” and taking up a piece of hard, stale bread from the table he added, “and this is the remains of the prisoner’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 me how it only looked out upon the roof of the next house and in such a position that the shouts of anyone confined there would never be heard.
“They probably kept their victims here to extort money, and then when they had drained them dry they gave them their liberty. They went downstairs,” 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 must know 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 used in the Charlotte Street affair. Bring more rope, as it may be too short. 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 and down the stairs, leaving us there to await his return.
Time passed slowly in that dark, gruesome house, and at each noise we halted breathlessly in expectation of the return of Parham or one of his friends.
Returning to the room wherein Eric Domville had so gallantly defied his enemies, we resumed our search, and from beneath the couch the constable drew forth the square brown-paper parcel which Winsloe had obtained from the house called Keymer, and handed over to Parham.
Pickering, in a trice, cut the string with his pocket-knife, and within found a small square wooden box nailed down. The jemmy soon forced it open, when there was revealed a large packet of papers neatly tied with pink tape, which on being opened showed that they were a quantity of negotiable 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 remarked after I had been through them and roughly calculated that their value was about twenty thousand pounds.
“Yes. We’ll put them back and see who returns to fetch them. There’s evidently a widespread conspiracy here, and it is fortunate, Mr Hughes, that you’ve been able at last to fix the house. By Jove!” the inspector added with a smile, “we ourselves couldn’t have done better – indeed, we couldn’t have done as well as you did.”
“I only hope that we shall discover what has become of my friend Domville,” I said. “I intend that his death shall not go unavenged. He was in this room, I’ll swear to that. I’d know his voice among ten thousand.”
“We shall see,” remarked the officer, confidently. “First let us explore and discover how they got rid of their victims. I only hope nobody will return while we are below. If they do, Horton and Marvin will 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 opened written 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: —
