William Le Queux (continued 3)

“These are good stout hooks,” he said, puffing smoke out of his nose. “They ought to hold all right. What do you think, Ashton?”

“Oh, for the love of Heaven do something—anything!” I exclaimed, for already the room was stifling, and down the passage the fire could be heard crackling as it ate its way towards us. “I don’t know what to think. I don’t know what you mean, or what you ask me.”

“Why,” he answered, “we can easily get the steel cross-pieces off those bedsteads, and, hooked one to another with these stout brass curtain-hooks they will reach to the ground easily. The question is—how shall we be able to secure the top one, and, when it is secured, shall we be able to let ourselves down the steel bands without cutting our hands to pieces? These flat bedstead bands are very sharp, you know.”

He remained fiddling with the hooks with one hand, while with the other he still held the candle above his head. The heat was becoming intolerable. Now we could hardly see across the room, and the smoke hurt our eyes.

All this had happened quickly, though in my dread the seconds seemed hours.

A wild cry in the room made us start. The Baronne had apparently gone suddenly mad. Dashing towards the door, she unlocked it and flung it wide open. An instant later she had disappeared—rushed out into the blinding smoke.

I ran at the door to slam it. As I did so I stumbled over something on the floor, and fell heavily.

I had stumbled over Paulton. In a paroxysm of terror he knelt there, motionless. He was praying! At any other time I should have felt nothing but unutterable contempt for him—a man I believed to be a murderer, driven through sheer mental torture to mumble prayers to his Creator whose name I had several times heard him blasphemously invoke. Now I felt only pity—intense pity. But I had no time to think. Clambering to my feet I managed to reach the door through the smoke that choked me, and to shut it securely. The Baronne de Coudron had, I knew, rushed to her death in her sudden access of madness—madness induced by terror.

Faulkner had removed all the hooks from which the heavy curtain-rings had hung. Now he was at work wrenching the steel bedstead binders from their sockets and hooking them together. Mechanically I helped him. And all the time I could hear Paulton, hidden in the darkness, beseeching the Almighty to save him from a terrible death.

Louder and louder grew the roar of the approaching fire, and with it the crackling of the woodwork and the falling of scorched walls. From afar came the sound of a mighty crash, the glare in the sky brightened, a thousand sparks were swept across the window. Instinctively we knew that in one of the west wings a roof had fallen in.

Hark! What was that? A voice was calling—a girl’s shrill voice, it sounded almost like a child’s. Whence did the cry come? It was nowhere in the house. Yet it could hardly be outside.

“Help! Quick! Quick! My God! Help!” The door of the room creaked ominously. Phew! The heat in the passage was scorching it. In a minute it would burst into flame. Where was that voice? I rushed to the window—

“Hello! Hello!” I shouted at the top of my voice.

The cry came from above. Tightly clutching the window frame I leapt forward and peered up in the darkness. As I did so, a coil of stout rope fell past me and disappeared. Now a rope was hanging down across the window from above. I stretched out an arm, and was just able to clutch it.

“Is it fast?” I shouted.

“Yes—fast to an iron staple that supports the chimney. Get out, quick! Quick!”

“Go down first—go down!” I shouted up.

“I tell you to get out!” the girl’s voice cried. This was no time for courtesies. The girl said we must go, and so...

I was pulled back violently from the window and flung on to the floor. A man was clutching at the rope. It was Paulton. At the same instant a shout of laughter sounded in the room. Scrambling to my feet, I saw Faulkner laughing. Had the man any nerves at all? Did he know what fear meant?

“Paulton did that,” he exclaimed. “I think he’s the limit. Look at him sliding down—the cur! Who is the girl above?”

“I don’t know, and don’t care!” I cried. “Do for the love of Heaven, follow down. I’m suffocating. The fire will be on us in an instant.”

“And leave the girl!” he said in a tone of reproach and surprise. “You can’t mean it, Ashton.”

“She won’t go first—she said so.”

“Won’t she?”

He went over to the window, leaned out as I had done, and looked up as best he could.

“Go down at once,” he shouted in a tone of extraordinary firmness. “We don’t move until you do.”

I suppose his commanding tone made her realise he really meant to wait. Anyway, a moment later a girl’s figure appeared, swinging above the window. She rested her feet upon the window-sill, and looked at us.

“Don’t be frightened,” she said. “It is tied very firmly, and the staple can’t give way.”

“Don’t be frightened!” And this from the “chit of a girl,” as I had called her the night before when she had so cleverly induced us to stay in the room. She was just visible now in the blackness beneath, as she slid down the rope with remarkable agility.

“Go ahead, Ashton,” Faulkner said, as the rope slackened. “I’ll steady the rope while you go down. Don’t get excited! There’s lots of time.”

Smoke was floating up from the window now as though the window were a chimney. My smarting eyes met Faulkner’s as I clutched the rope with both hands and prepared to swing out. His eyes were bloodshot, red and swollen. Yet he was actually smiling. And he had lit another cigarette!

It was with a feeling of intense relief, that as I looked up from the ground, I saw Faulkner swing out on the rope from the fourth storey window, twisting round and round like a joint upon a roasting jack. It is said that in moments of acute crisis thoughts, absurd in their triviality, sometimes take prominence. It was so now. As I watched, with halting breath, Faulkner’s hunched-up figure slowly sliding down like a monkey on a string, only one thought was in my mind.

Would he, when he reached the ground, have that cigarette between his lips?

He reached the ground, and I went up to him. In an access of emotion I grasped him by the hand.

“You are a hero, old chap!” I exclaimed. “A perfect hero!”

“Don’t be foolish, Ashton,” he answered. “Instead, hand out that box of matches. I do think,” he added, “it might have occurred to you to hang on to the rope to prevent my spinning round in that absurd fashion. I hate being made to look ridiculous.”

He struck a match. Yes, the cigarette was still between his lips!

I had never before seen a blazing house at close quarters, and the sight impressed though it appalled me. Together we walked out into the weedy Italian garden, a hundred yards or more, and there stood watching the spectacle. Truly, it was superb. One after another immense sheets of flame shot up high into the sky, parted into fifty tongues which quivered for an instant, then vanished.

Where was Vera? What of her? Was she still alive, or had she died in that awful furnace?

A breeze was at our backs, and thus the smoke was swept away, revealing the conflagration in all its awful grandeur.

And now the window we had just left began suddenly to turn red. The redness grew brighter. As I watched it, panting with excitement, a red and yellow ribbon licked the window frame that a few minutes previously we had clutched. The ribbon broadened, lengthened, swept out into the night, lapping the grey wall of the old château until it floated high above the roof, shrivelling the ivy and burning it to ashes.

That was the last window in the main building. There was nothing more to burn. For some moments the flames seemed slightly to subside. Then, all at once, with a great crash which must surely have been heard a mile or more away, the entire roof broke inward, opening up to the sky an inferno from which blazing fragments in their thousands and myriad sparks shooting up into the sky illuminated fields and woods for several miles around.

“What a gorgeous sight!”

It was the middle of the night, and the place being far removed from any habitation save the little village two miles off behind the hill, the alarm had not yet been raised.

I turned. Faulkner’s eyes, wide open, were rivetted on the scene. For the first time in his life, as I believe, he had given way to his emotion. “Ah!” he added in an undertone, “how this makes one think!”

“Think?” I said. “Of what?” My only thought was of my loved one.

He turned his head and looked at me.

“Oh,” he answered cynically, “of what we shall have for lunch to-morrow. Good Heavens!” he exclaimed, and in the light cast down upon us by the blood-red canopy flickering in the sky above I could see his eyes shining strangely, “Have you no sense at all of grandeur? Can’t you realise and appreciate the overpowering magnificence of all this? Have you no sentiment, romance or poetry at all in your conception? Don’t you feel the hand of Providence? Doesn’t this bring home to you the majesty of eternity better than any religion that has been tried or thought of? Really, Ashton, really...”

I was amazed at his sudden outburst of pent-up feeling—I had imagined him cold, undemonstrative, unemotional, a being without nerves and devoid of temperament. So his self-control and apparent calmness had been nothing but a mask. I think I liked him all the better for it.

We heard voices—women’s shrill, terrified voices. We were unable to locate them. Suddenly I started. Surely that was Vera’s voice! Yes, I recognised it.

Attentively we both listened. Then, as the flames shot up again, lighting up the meadows away to the woods, we both distinctly saw in silhouette a man and a woman struggling in the distance.

The man had her by the wrists. He was overpowering her. At that same moment the red glare sank, and both were hidden in the darkness.

Chapter Seventeen.

Found in the Débris.

We were on the alert in a moment.

Though we searched in the darkness for a distance of a hundred yards or more, we failed to come upon either the man or the woman of whom we had caught a brief glimpse as they struggled desperately.

Nor did we again hear the sound of voices. That I had heard Vera’s voice, I felt convinced. We wondered if there was a lodge, and how far it was away. Perhaps the servants had taken shelter there.

“The whole place seems to be deserted,” Faulkner said when, after a futile search, we again found ourselves near the burning château, where the fire had by this time subsided considerably. “And yet there must have been people in the house—at any rate, servants.”

We walked right round the château. What a huge old place it had been! No wonder the fire had taken a long time to reach us, if it had broken out, as it presumably had done, in a wing remote from the room where we had been. Judging by the architecture of the outer walls I concluded that the château must have been built towards the end of the fourteenth century, and afterwards added to.

There was a sharp nip in the air, and we felt chilly enough. Already the streaks of dawn were striving to pierce the belt of leaden clouds, against which the black pinewoods could be seen distinctly outlined.

Faulkner turned to me.

“Have you any money?” he asked.

“Plenty,” I answered. “Why?”

“When it is daylight we must make for the nearest village and get a conveyance to the railway-station. We must be miles from everywhere, or fire-escapes would have come along before now. I suppose the Baronne is dead.”

“She can have escaped only by a miracle,” I said. “We shall probably know soon.”

“And that cur—Paulton. What can have become of him?”

“I can’t help thinking it was Paulton we saw struggling. But who can the woman have been? I hope it wasn’t Vera. I am certain I heard her voice. What do you think?”

“It may have been Mademoiselle de Coudron,” Faulkner said. “She seems to have disappeared. What a brave girl! She must have climbed along the roofs to save us, with the fire just behind her. I wonder who the woman was who called for help first of all—I mean before we knew that fire had broken out.”

“The whole thing is most mysterious, but the biggest mystery is the disappearance of everybody. We heard at least three voices in the darkness!”

Happening to glance down the long carriage drive which, after winding for a hundred yards across the broad, level lawns, disappeared into the wood, I noticed two men on horseback approaching at a walk. They had just emerged from the wood, and, so far as I could see in the half-light, were officials of some kind.

They broke into a jog-trot as they caught sight of us, and took a short cut across the grass. As they came near us we saw that they were two gendarmes.

“What are you doing here?” one of them asked sharply in French.

I didn’t like his tone, and I saw Faulkner’s lip twitch with annoyance. Instead of answering, we looked the two men up and down.

“What are you doing here—tell me at once,” the speaker repeated, in a bullying tone.

I suppose we did look disreputable, standing there without collars, with unlaced boots, and with our coat collars turned up. Also a day’s growth of beard is hardly conducive to a smart appearance, and in most civilised countries but America a man is judged by his appearance and by the clothes he wears.

“Who set fire to the château?” demanded the gendarme, quickly losing his temper as we refused to speak.

“Oh, we did, of course,” I exclaimed in French, meaning to be cynical. “We burnt it down on purpose.”

The man raised his black eyebrows, and glanced at his companion.

“You hear that?” he said meaningly.

The man who had remained silent produced a notebook and scribbled in it.

Faulkner turned to me.

“A few more of your ‘witticisms’ Ashton,” he said, “and we shall get penal servitude. Don’t you know you are talking to State officials, and have you ever known a State official to be other than matter-of-fact? For Heaven’s sake, don’t make more statements that may be used in evidence against us.”

“My friend was joking,” Faulkner said in his perfect French to the man who had addressed us; but the official seemed not to understand what the word plaisanterie meant.

At this juncture the men exchanged one or two remarks in a rapid undertone. Then, while one of them remained, apparently to keep guard over us, the other cantered away across the turf, struck the road close to the wood, and disappeared.

In the absence of his companion, who apparently was his superior in authority, the gendarme thawed to some extent. We gathered that the Château d’Uzerche was about eighty miles by road from Monte Carlo, and twelve or so miles from Digne, in the Bedeone Valley, also that no village lay within a radius of two miles of it. Small wonder, therefore, that no fire-escape had come.

“Where is la Baronne de Coudron?” the man asked suddenly.

We explained that we feared she had been either burnt or suffocated. At this he looked grave.

“And her companion, the Englishman Monsieur Paulton, where is he?”

Again we explained. He had escaped from the fire, but, since his escape, we had not seen him.

“Why do you want to know?” Faulkner asked, in his politest tones.

“Because,” the man answered, taken off his guard, “we have a warrant for the arrest of both Madame la Baronne and the Englishman.”

“Arrest! For what?” Faulkner asked.

“On several charges. The most recent is a charge of obtaining money by fraud—a large sum. There is also a charge of blackmail.”

“Against both?”

“Against both.”

I was silent. Here was a new phase of the affair. By degrees we gathered from him that Paulton was known to be interested in various undertakings of, to say the least, a dubious nature, also that he promoted wild-cat companies in England, on the Continent, and in America. Information that especially interested us was that all who had escaped from the fire had made their way to the lodge at the entrance to the drive.

It was at this juncture that the other gendarme reappeared. He was still on horseback, and, as he came towards us slowly, our attention became centred upon the man who walked beside him, with one hand on his stirrup. In the distance it looked very like Paulton.

He seemed quite composed. His mouth was bound up, partly concealing his face.

When a few yards from us the gendarme reined up. As he did so, Paulton raised his arm, pointed at me, and said in French—

“That’s the man you came to arrest. That is Dago Paulton.”

“And his companion?” the gendarme asked.

“Is his valet.”

“And your name, monsieur?”

“Ferrari—Paoli Ferrari. My father was Italian, my mother English. I have been in Mr Paulton’s service as butler for the last three years. Previous to that I was butler to Count Pinto”—the Portuguese diplomat who had won the cup for shooting.

“Thank you, monsieur, I am exceedingly indebted to you,” the gendarme said blandly. Then, producing an official-looking document, he said to me—

“We have to take you into custody, you and Madame la Baronne.”

For some moments, indignation prevented my speaking. Was it possible these outrageous statements of Paulton’s would be taken without question? Such a thing seemed monstrous and grotesque, but knowing, as I did, how intensely stupid some police officials are, no matter to what country they may belong, I thought it likely that I should presently be marched off and placed under lock and key.

Faulkner, to my annoyance, seemed amused.

“They will march you twelve miles to Digne,” he said, “and when you get there and prove your identity they will apologise in the most humble fashion for the mistake that has been made. Meanwhile, you will have had your twelve-mile walk, and Paulton have been allowed to escape. Had we looked less disreputable than we do, our statements might have been believed in preference to his.”

In my indignation I at first became sarcastic, and thinking that liberty at that moment would be far better than being held up upon a false charge, I made a sudden bolt for it, cutting swiftly across a meadow and leaping a stream. I am a good runner, but, of course, the mounted gendarmes were quickly upon me, and cut me off, so I soon found myself in their hands.

Faulkner elected to come with me, but we were not marched to Digne. Instead, we were allowed to walk leisurely alongside the horses as far as the village, a distance of two miles or so, and there were shown into a comfortable room in the tiny police bureau, and given breakfast. The garde-champêtre spoke English fluently. He had lived in England several years. Consequently in a short time we succeeded in convincing him of the blunder the gendarme had made, and in proving who we were.

By this time the village was beginning to awaken, and crowds were on their way to the château. We soon found a tradesman willing to let out a horse and trap in return for a louis paid in advance. In this we also started back for the château, anxious to get news of Vera, and of Violet.

On our way by the road, we found the lodge of the château, it had not been in sight more than a minute, when a large red car passed out through the gateway into the high road we were on, turned, and sped away from us along the long white ribbon of road at terrific speed. It must, we calculated as it dwindled into a distant speck, have been travelling at a speed of quite sixty miles an hour. Faulkner looked at me significantly. Our surmise had been correct, the servants had sought shelter at the lodge and had now left.

By the time we reached the smouldering ruins, a score of people, all of them peasants, stood staring at it. The good French farmers had each some platitude to make: “It must have been an enormous fire;” “It must have burned very quickly;” “Some one must have set it alight,” and so on. They were all people of the bovine type, as we found when we tried to obtain information from them.

The Baronne and her niece lived there. That was about all that they could tell us. Apparently they knew nothing of Paulton—had never seen or heard of him.

How many servants had there been in the Château they knew not. But a man and several women had just left the lodge in a motor-car.

“We can do no good by staying here,” Faulkner said at last. “We had better make for Digne. What puzzles me is, where can the servants be? There must have been servants, and they could have told us something. They are not at the lodge. Perhaps Paulton had taken them with him in the car we had seen. The only soul at the lodge is an old woman who is stone deaf, and she is crying so that she cannot speak at all.”

We stood gazing thoughtfully at the still smouldering fire, when Faulkner said suddenly—

“What is that big, square thing down among the twisted girders?” and he pointed to it.

We could not make out what it was. Then, all at once I realised.

“Why,” I said, “it’s a safe—one of those big American safes. I expect its contents are uninjured.”

But where was Vera? Ah! I felt beside myself in anxiety—a breathless, burning longing, to know how fared the one woman in all the world who held me in her hands for life, or for death.

She loved me, truly and well—of that I was convinced. And yet she existed in that mysterious hateful bondage—a bondage which, alas! she dared not attempt to break.

What could be the truth? Why were her lips closed?—Ay, why indeed? I dreaded to think.

Chapter Eighteen.

In which the Mask is Raised.

Three days had passed.

Two curious things happened while we were sitting in the atrium of the Casino in Monte Carlo during the interval.

In the first place Paulton’s friend, Henderson, whom I had met only on that one occasion in the fumoir of the hotel, happened to saunter in. He looked hard at both of us, but either did not recognise us—a thing that I think hardly possible—or else deliberately cut us.

Later, I went over to the buffet with Faulkner, for the play was not interesting, and we had decided to leave. A dozen men stood there, talking, and suddenly I caught the word “D’Uzerche.”

They were talking of the fire three days previously. Anxious to hear all I could about Château d’Uzerche, I moved a little nearer.

“They’ve not discovered the Baronne’s body,” I heard the young Frenchman say, “and apparently no one else was burnt. I wonder if those old rumours one heard about the Baronne were really true?”

“What rumours?” his companion, a bald-headed gambler, asked. “I don’t seem to remember hearing any.”

“You mean to say you have never heard the stories that everybody knows?” the first speaker exclaimed. “My dear fellow, where do you live?”

“In Paris as a rule,” his friend answered drily. “I returned here last week.”

“Ah, pardon me, I had forgotten. Well, it has long been common talk—”

He lowered his voice and spoke into his companion’s ear. I approached as near as I dared, but I could not catch a word.

“You can’t mean it!” his friend exclaimed. “Surely it isn’t possible!”

“Everything is possible, mon cher ami,” the first speaker said. “The less possible things seem, generally the more possible they are. I shall be anxious to hear what is found inside the safe that the newspapers say has been discovered amongst the débris. If it is not claimed it will, I take it, be the duty of the police to open it.”

“But surely it will be claimed.”

“I doubt it under the circumstances. I believe the rumours to be true.”

An electric bell rang arrogantly, in warning that the curtain was about to rise, and some moments later the atrium was half deserted.

I told Faulkner what I had heard. He seemed in no way surprised.

“I thought it inadvisable to tell you this before,” he said after a pause, “but now that you have got wind of it I may as well tell you the rumours—or rather the chief one. The rest don’t matter. The Baronne de Coudron was known to be extremely rich, yet a few years ago she was quite poor. She bought the Château d’Uzerche recently. How and where she suddenly got the money is a mystery that has puzzled everybody, and rumours have been afloat that she obtained it by means which could lead her to penal servitude. But of course nobody knows anything definite—so nobody dares do more than insinuate.”

“The gendarmes seemed to know something definite,” I said.

“Yes, and much use they made of it! Paulton is most likely safely back in England by now.”

“They can arrest him there of course.”

“They can—but will they? Do you think officials capable of being hoodwinked as these gendarmes were, will have acumen enough to catch a clever man like Paulton? We must admit that he is clever.”

The more I saw of Faulkner, the more I grew to like him. Singularly undemonstrative in ordinary conversation, he recalled to my mind a blacksmith’s forge that is covered and banked up with cold, wet coal, but that burns so fiercely within. What had first attracted me to the lad had been his amazing coolness in the face of death, a coolness that amounted to indifference. I could picture him under fire, calmly rolling a cigarette and telling others what to do. Yet he was not a soldier. Like myself he was merely an idler. Leaving out the Houghton Park incident, I have myself only once been under fire. It was not on a battlefield, though not far from one—the field of Tewkesbury. It was during a big rabbit shoot, when two of the guns fired straight at me simultaneously, and the rabbit they killed rolled over on to my feet, dead.

My conduct was not heroic on that occasion I am afraid. With one bound I sprang behind a big elm, and, from that position of safety, hurled vituperation at my unintentional assailants, ordering them to desist. It took me some moments to convince myself I had not been hit, but the shock to my system was, I confess, considerable.

From the theatre we strolled through the big doors into the Salles de jeux. I tossed a hundred-franc note on the rouge and left it there. Red came up six times, and I gathered up my winnings.

The ball clicked again the seventh time, and black came up!

An old man with fingers like claws, and horribly long and dirty nails, introduced himself, engaged me in conversation, and ended by trying to induce me to partake in his infallible system for winning at roulette!

What a lot of rubbish has been written about the Rooms at Monte! The first time I went there—when I was quite a youth—I expected to find a sort of Aladdin’s palace, myriad glittering lights everywhere, gorgeously-dressed women sparkling with diadems and precious stones.

Instead, I sauntered into a series of large, lofty, heavily-gilded rooms with an atmosphere one could cut with a knife, in which were several long tables with people sitting round them, quite common-looking people, and anything but smart; the majority of the women were bloused and skirted tourists. One might have mistaken the scene for a number of board-meetings in progress simultaneously, but for the fact that in the centre of each table sat men in funereal black who, at intervals, droned monotonously through their noses—

“Messieurs, faites vos jeux.”

And then a little later—

“Rien n’va plus!”

Then the click of the ball, and the jingle of money lost and won.

It was one of the greatest disillusionments I have ever experienced. There was nothing in the least exciting, nothing sensational. There was a rustle of notes, and the whole scene was sordid, debasing. I can remember only one other disillusionment that has given me so great a shock. I experienced that the first time I visited Niagara Falls. I had seen pictures in plenty of the Falls, and had based thereon my idea of what the Falls would look like when I got there.

I arrived at noon, eager to gaze upon “Nature’s Marvellous Phenomenon,” as the booklet of the Railway Company described it. The first thing I saw was a truly gigantic hoarding-board advertising somebody’s lung-tonic, alongside it one recommending some one else’s Blood Capsules, and then, whichever way I looked, the landscape, which should have been gorgeous, was disfigured by similar announcements. Even the water was spoilt, for some of the falls being harnessed to dye-works, ran in shades of dirty greens and reds and yellows, and when I wanted to go under the main Falls I found I must buy a ticket at a box-office and go down in a lift. Never, I remember thinking, have the words, “Where only man is vile,” been more applicable than at Niagara.

But this is an aside. Elated at my success at roulette, a game which generally bores me, for I generally lose, I suggested to Faulkner that we should go together to some haunt of amusement more exhilarating than the Casino.

“What about the ball down in La Condamine to-night?” he asked, looking at me oddly.

“Ball?” I said. “What ball? I didn’t know there was one.”

“Oh, yes there is. It isn’t an aristocratic ball, you know. Far from it. I’ve lived out here a good deal, and got to know my way about. It is rather an expensive form of amusement, but as you have made two hundred and fifty-six pounds in ten minutes, you may as well spend a pound or two that way as any other. I think you will afterwards admit it has been an ‘experience’.”

I did admit it—and a great deal besides. It was the most “unconventional” ball I had ever attended, or have attended since. We picked up a number of acquaintances, eight or ten in all, and went boisterously down to La Condamine. The gay supper was most enjoyable. Most of the women’s dresses were suitable for warm climates, being conspicuous by their scantiness, rather than by their beauty. Some wore the black loup over their eyes. At supper I sat beside a girl whose identity was thus concealed. She had a wonderful figure, and her thick dark hair hung in two long plaits down below her waist. About her movements there was something that seemed familiar to me, and in vain I tried to recollect when I had met her before, and where. At last my curiosity outran my discretion.

“Take off your mask,” I said to her in French. “I’ll give you two louis.”

“Give them to me,” she said, also in French, the only language she had talked, “and I will take it off.”

I did so.

“Don’t be too surprised,” she exclaimed in broken English with a ripple of laughter. She pulled up the mask, then twisted it off, and I found myself seated beside Lady Thorold’s maid, Judith, whom I had last seen at the hotel on the night the Baronne de Coudron had arrived.

I confess that I was considerably annoyed.

I am not, I am thankful to think, one of those men who like to behave absurdly with domestic servants, especially with other people’s servants.

I had never liked this girl, she had always struck me as being hypocritical and designing, and though now she looked extremely pretty, judged by a certain standard, I could not dispel from my thoughts the picture of the demure maid with downcast eyes, whom a casual observer probably would not have looked at twice.

Her manner was the reverse of demure, nor were her eyes downcast. They struck me as being the most brazen eyes I had seen for a long time as they gazed unflinchingly up into my own. Much as I knew, I disliked her, I could not, at that moment, help noticing those strangely dark eyes of hers, now so full of laughter and wickedness; also the singular evenness of the small white teeth; the natural redness of the full lips; the clear, olive complexion, and the thick mantle of long, blue-black hair. Yet I did not admire her in the least. Oh, no. If her appearance struck me as remarkable and not wholly unpleasing, it was only for a brief instant.

“Have you left Lady Thorold’s service?” I asked, loud enough for others to hear. I thought that, at any rate, would be a nasty snub. Instead, she laughed immoderately. So, to my surprise, did her friends who had overheard my question.

“Ah, monsieur, but you are too drôle!” she exclaimed, as she stopped laughing. “I was not in Lady Thorold’s service, or in la Baronne de Coudron’s or in anybody else’s. I have never been in service. I—in service? I? Pah!”

She made a gesture of contempt.

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“I was Lady Thorold’s friend, her very intimate friend, and la Baronne de Coudron’s too, and—and other people’s. I am no servant, I assure you! m’sieur.”

I stared at her.

“You little impostor!” I said after a pause.

She laughed, and took my arm confidingly.

“I have always liked you, I have really,” she said in a coaxing undertone. “You are not like other men. You are not always trying to make love to everybody. Ma foi! How I detest some of your countrymen, they make themselves too ridiculous when they come to France.”

“You seem to know a lot about them,” I answered, for want of something better to say.

“Bien! I can assure you!” she replied, to my surprise, quite bitterly. Then she said quickly, in her broken English as though anxious to change the subject—

“You want Mademoiselle Vera—eh?”

“What do you mean?” I gasped, amazed.

“What I say. You want her. Well, she is quite near here.”

“Near here!”

“Mais oui. Pay me enough, and I will take you to her—now.”

I was panting with excitement. With an effort I controlled myself. It was clear to me that this woman knew a great deal. She might indeed be able to clear up the whole mystery of Houghton Park if she were paid enough, perhaps also the mystery connected with Château d’Uzerche.

Yes, I would humour her. If it became necessary, I would pay her the highest sum she might ask for, that I was in a position to pay. But first to meet my darling again. How I longed to see her once more, after all those mysterious happenings!

“How much do you want?” I asked abruptly.

She named an absurdly large sum. Eventually we came to terms, and I paid her in French notes.

“Très bien!” she said, as she stuffed the money into some queer corner in her brief skirt. “You are a gentilhomme, not like ze others. Mais oui.”

Then she rose, signalled to me with her eyes, and I followed her out of the room.

Chapter Nineteen.

More Revelations.

Eagerly I strode out after her.

We went a short distance along the road to the left, then turned again to the left and halted before a large white house. Up two flights of stairs she led me, along a short corridor, and through two rooms. She opened the door at the further end of the second room, and then motioned to me to enter.

Seated at a table, playing cards, were Paulton, Violet de Coudron, Vera Thorold and the Baronne. Violet and Vera were in evening gowns—Vera in turquoise blue. The sight of the Baronne sitting there, alive and uninjured, so astounded me that I remained speechless. Paulton sprang fiercely to his feet.

“Who brought you up here?” he exclaimed furiously. “Who?”

The door had remained open. A ripple of laughter behind me made me cast a hurried glance that way, and I saw Judith convulsed with amusement. She recovered her composure in a few moments, and came in.

“I have carried out my threat,” she said in French quickly, addressing Paulton. “You brought it entirely upon yourself by your niggardliness. Mr Ashton is generous—and a gentilhomme.”

Paulton clenched his fist.

“Yes,” the French girl went on, looking at him fearlessly, “you are quite right to restrain yourself. It would be a bad night’s work if a tragedy were to happen here. At the château it was different. You had it your own way there—up to a point.”

The man became blasphemous, and I saw Vera wince. Her eyes were set upon mine, in mute appeal.

The truth flashed in upon me. Paulton ran this private gaming establishment. The Baronne presumably was his partner. Judith was an accomplice. But the two girls? What part did they play? It was horrible finding Vera here, yet my faith in her never wavered. I knew she must be there against her will, that eventually she would explain all. And seeing what I had seen of Violet, I felt equally sure that circumstances which she too could not prevent were responsible for her presence.

I suppose most men who self-complacently term themselves “men of the world,” would have laughed outright at what they would have called my “blind belief in innocence,” had the circumstances been related to them. For here were two young girls mixing with the lost souls of Monte Carlo, and apparently enjoying themselves. On the face of it, my confidence seemed quixotic, I admit, but there are times when I trust my instinct rather than even circumstantial evidence. And up to now my instinct has generally proved correct.

This was no time for deliberate thought, however. I knew I must act quickly, and for once I was able to come to a decision with remarkable promptitude. Obviously Paulton and the Baronne were there in hiding. They knew they were liable at any moment to be arrested. And, thanks to Judith, I had discovered their place of concealment.

“You know there is a warrant out for the arrest of you both,” I said, facing them fearlessly. “I can at once inform the police of your whereabouts—or I can say nothing. It is for you to decide which I shall do.”

The Baronne looked at me, as I thought, imploringly.

“If Vera Thorold comes away with me at once, and you undertake never again to molest her, your secret will remain safe, so far as I am concerned. If you refuse to let her come, then you will be arrested at once.”

The tables were, indeed, strangely turned. A few days previously these two adventurers had held me at their mercy, and Faulkner too. Now I could dictate to them what terms I chose.

I saw a look of dismay enter Violet de Coudron’s eyes, and I guessed the reason of it. She and Vera had become close friends, and now Vera was to go from her. It seemed dreadful to leave a young, beautiful, refined girl like Violet in the control of these ghouls, yet I could not suggest their surrendering her too, for was she not the Baronne’s niece? And was the Baronne actually a Baronne—or was she merely an adventuress? I had looked up her name and family in the “Almanack de Gotha,” and she seemed to be all right, but still—

Then an idea came to me. I would, with Vera’s help, and Faulkner’s, try to steal the girl away if she should express a wish to leave those unhealthy and unholy surroundings. It would be almost like repaying Paulton and the Baronne in their own coin. These and other thoughts sped through my mind with great rapidity.

“Well,” I said quickly, addressing Paulton again, “what is your answer? Am I to betray your whereabouts, or not?”

He still hesitated, still loth to decide. Then suddenly he exclaimed abruptly—

“Take her. I shall be even with you soon, never fear. I shall be even with you in a way you don’t expect.”

I smiled, thinking his words were but a hollow taunt. Later, however, I also realised to the full that his had been no empty boast.

The two girls left the room, and both returned wearing hats and sealskin coats over their evening gowns. Then, linking my arm in that of my beloved, we descended the stairs together.

At last she was saved from that scoundrelly gang who seemed to hold her so completely in their clutches, she was still mine—mine!

At Judith’s suggestion we walked back to where the ball was in progress. As a matter-of-fact I was undecided how next to act. Besides, I wanted to see Faulkner, who was awaiting me.

So we went back, and seated with Vera and Judith, I had a long chat with the latter, about many things. She told me much that interested me. Paulton and the Baronne ran this establishment, as I had guessed, and often made it their headquarters. They had several assumed names. They had run similar secret gaming-houses in Paris, Ostend, Aix and elsewhere. In this particular house they lived in a big, well-furnished flat overlooking the harbour of Monaco. Vera and Violet had each a bedroom, and shared a sitting-room. Since they had met for the first time, some weeks previously, they had become great friends—in fact almost inseparable. Both had been staying at the Château d’Uzerche when the fire had broken out, and she, Judith, had been there too. It had been Vera’s voice we had heard calling for help before we suspected the alarming truth. She had been overcome by smoke in her own room—it was just before that she had called for help—and almost stifled. No lives had been lost. There had been only five servants at D’Uzerche that night, and they had all escaped. The Baronne had, it seemed, escaped by turning sharp to the right into a lumber-room, almost directly she had rushed out of the room. From the lumber-room she had scrambled through a skylight on to the roof, entered another skylight immediately above a rusty iron fire staircase, the existence of which everybody else had forgotten, and so made her way out of the building in safety.

I inquired about the man and woman struggling in the dark.

She smiled when I referred to this, and, pulling up her short sleeve—it reached barely to her elbow—displayed several horizontal streaks of a deep purple which looked like bruises.

“I was that woman,” exclaimed Judith quietly. “The man was Dago, and these are the marks his fingers left upon me when he gripped me and fought with me. Are you surprised I have to-night so readily betrayed his hiding-place?”

“Not so very readily,” I said, thinking of the sum of which she had mulcted me before she would speak at all.

Guessing my thoughts, she laughed.

“Still, m’sieur,” she said, “you will admit that you have received full value for your money, n’est-ce-pas?”

During this conversation, carried on in one of the ante-rooms within earshot of the music in the ballroom, Vera sat almost in silence. I grew to understand the woman Judith better, indeed almost to like her. She said little about herself, though I questioned her frequently concerning her own life. She seemed more inclined to talk of other people, and their doings. One thing I did gather was that she belonged to a gang of male and female adventurers, who probably stood at nothing when they had an end to gain. To this gang belonged also the Baronne, Paulton and Henderson. Whether Sir Charles Thorold was, or was not, in some way mixed up in this gang’s schemes I could not ascertain for certain, though several times I tried to. For about Sir Charles and Lady Thorold, Judith seemed unwilling to speak.

I had a long and confidential chat with Vera. Ah! that hour was perhaps full of the sweetest happiness of my life. She was mine—mine! It was past three in the morning when we paused for a few moments in our animated conversation. “Ah, here comes your friend,” exclaimed my sweet beloved.

Faulkner, passing the open door, had caught sight of us and strolled in. Violet de Coudron was with him. She looked dreadfully tired, I thought, though this did not greatly detract from her very exceptional beauty.

Briefly, I told Faulkner all that had happened.

“It is fortunate we are not conventional,” he said lightly, when I had outlined my plan. “What food for scandal some people would find in all this. I think, after all, that our visit here to-night has not been wholly unprofitable—eh? You may be surprised to hear that this new friend of mine”—and he indicated Violet de Coudron, seated beside him—“has arranged to leave the Baronne for good and all. She tells me she leads an awful life here, and that when Vera is gone—”

“But you have known Vera only a few weeks,” I interrupted, addressing Violet.

“Yes,” she answered sadly, with her pretty accent, “and those are the only weeks of comparative happiness I have had. I couldn’t stay here with these people without her. I couldn’t. I really couldn’t. Oh, if you only knew all I have been through—all I have been forced to endure since the Baronne adopted me!” And she hid her face in her hands.

“Adopted you!” I exclaimed. “You said you were the Baronne’s niece.”

“I said so—yes. I always said so, because she made me, and I passed always as her niece. But I am not. I can scarcely remember my parents. All I can recollect is that they were very poor—but oh, so kind to me! I remember their kissing me passionately one day, with tears streaming down their cheeks—it was evening, and nearly dark—and telling me that they had to go away from me, that probably we should never meet again in this world.”

“How old were you then?” I asked, much interested.

“I could not have been more than six, possibly seven. It was in Rouen. They took me to a big, fashionable street I did not remember having ever been in before, kissed me again and again once more, stood me by the porte-cochère, and rang the bell. Then they went hurriedly away. By the time the bell was answered, they had disappeared. I was questioned by a tall man-servant—after that, I don’t exactly recollect what happened, except that the Baronne adopted me. She lived in the big house.”

“And it was in Rouen, you say?”

“Yes, in Rouen.”

“Do you think you would recognise it if you saw the outside of it again?” I asked quickly.

She paused.

“I think I should,” she said thoughtfully, “though we did not stay there long—not more than a few months. Why do you ask?”

“Only,” I answered, “because I have an idea. But now let us leave this place. It is nearly four o’clock.”

Yes, we were a truly unconventional quartette.

The hotel people were surprised, on the following morning, to find one of our two rooms occupied by two fair visitors, while in the other Faulkner and I slept, tucked up together. But in gay, reckless Monte nobody is surprised at anything.

That an attempt would at once be made to discover Violet’s whereabouts and get her back, we knew. For that reason we had arranged to leave for Paris by the mid-day rapide.

Chapter Twenty.

Concerns a Mysterious Light.

London—the dear, dirty old city of delight—looked gloomy enough as we passed out of Charing Cross yard, and made our way around the corner to the Grand Hotel. It was a damp, raw evening, and after the crisp atmosphere and bright sunshine of the Riviera, seemed to us more than ordinarily depressing.

By wire we had engaged rooms at the Grand for Vera and Violet, overlooking Trafalgar Square, and we now began to wonder what our next step ought to be. I wanted, if possible, to get into communication with Sir Charles and Lady Thorold, for I was anxious not to delay my marriage any longer, and Vera, though she had promised to become my wife as soon as possible, refused to do so until she had seen her parents.

But where were her parents?

She had no idea, neither had I. We had telegraphed to the address in Brighton where they had been staying, but an intimation had come from the Post Office that the message had not been delivered, the addressee having left.

As for Faulkner, he was distrait. Something seemed to be on his mind, and I thought I knew what it was. He was engaged to be married to Gladys Deroxe, of whom Vera had, during the past day or two, let drop certain things.

Gladys Deroxe, she had confided to me among other things, was one of the most jealous women she had ever met. Her jealousy amounted almost to an obsession. When I heard this I breathed a fervent hope that Faulkner might never marry her, for I have seen something of jealous wives among my friends. What was weighing upon Faulkner’s mind, of course, was that he had brought Violet to London with him, and that, as Miss Deroxe lived in Mayfair, she might at any moment get to hear of this, and then?

Another thought occurred to me now, for the first time. Had my unemotional, phlegmatic friend fallen in love with Violet de Coudron, the foundling?

She was pretty and fascinating enough for any one to fall in love with. Personally, I thought Faulkner would do well to marry her in preference to Gladys, who I gathered to be something of a schemer, with an eye to the main chance. Vera had come to know Miss Deroxe quite by accident. At first she had liked her, but soon she had begun to discover her true character. Violet on the contrary, she liked immensely. Yet girls form strange prejudices.

Thus a week of anxiety passed. The two girls remained at the Grand, while I stayed at my rooms, and Faulkner slept at his club. Though he did not tell me, I knew he had not informed Gladys of his return to town. Therefore he must have felt somewhat perturbed, though, as was his wont, he completely hid his feelings, when one morning as I was walking with him up Hamilton Place a taxi swept up behind us, stopped beside the kerb, and a rather florid-looking girl, leaning out of the cab window, called in a loud, querulous voice—

“Frank! Frank!”

Before he presented me to her I had guessed her identity, and I saw at a glance that she was none too well pleased at his being in London without her knowing it.

“I was calling upon my uncle Henry,” she said presently, “and chanced to look out of the window, when I saw you go by. I was amazed. I thought you were on the Riviera still. So I hurried out, hailed a taxi, and pursued you. Why didn’t you tell me you were back?”

He invented on the spot some excellent reason—I forget what it was—and it seemed to satisfy her. And then, feeling that my presence was not needed, I made an excuse, raised my hat, and left them.

“I am only glad,” I remembered saying mentally and ungrammatically, “it is Faulkner, and not I, who is to marry that girl.”

Next day, I took my well-beloved in the car down to Virginia Water, where we lunched, and returned in the afternoon. That evening I, as usual, scanned the personal columns of the Morning Post. I have a habit of doing this, as some of the announcements one sees there are not devoid of humour.

That day the personal columns were singularly dull. The advertisements of money-lenders masquerading as private gentlemen, and as ladies anxious to be philanthropic, occupied a good deal of the space. There was the widow of twenty-three who implored “some kind-hearted gentleman” (sic) “to lend her twenty pounds to save her from the bailiffs;” a “lady of high social standing, closely related to an Earl,” who touted for the chaperonage of débutantes, willing to pay for the privilege of being surreptitiously smuggled into Society; a crack-brained inventor advertising for some one to finance a new torpedo for destroying German bands, or something of the kind, and so on. There was nothing at all exciting. Why, I can’t say, but quite a commonplace line at the foot of the second column interested me. It ran—

“Meet me 2.”

That was all—no name, no address, no date. Why I had noticed it at all, I could not imagine. I concluded it must be the extreme brevity of the advertisement that had caught my fancy.

Next morning, it being dry and fine, I called at the Grand Hotel, and took Vera for a run in the car to Hatfield, returning by St. Albans. We lunched at Pagani’s—one gets so tired of the sameness of the ordinary restaurants—and after that I left Vera at the hotel, and sent my car to the garage.

Somehow I felt in a restless mood, and the atmosphere of well-bred respectability pervading the club oppressed me, as it so often does. I am afraid that the older I grow the more Bohemian I become, and the less willing to bend to convention. It seems to me farcical, for instance, that in this twentieth century of ours, a rule made fifty years ago to the effect that “pipes shall not be smoked in this club,” should still be enforced. Plenty of the younger members of the clubs where this rule obtains have endeavoured to rebel, but in vain. The Committee have solemnly pointed out to such free-thinking and independent spirits that their fathers and grandfathers got on quite well without smoking pipes in the club, and that if their fathers and their grandfathers did without pipes, they ought to be able to do without pipes too—in the club. Oh, yes, they were at liberty, if they liked, to smoke cigarettes at five a penny all over the house, but never tobacco in a pipe, even if they paid half-a-crown an ounce for it.

The conversation of the only two occupants of the smoking-room—try as I would, I could not help listening to it—wearied me so intensely that I got up at last and went out. I strolled aimlessly up the street to Piccadilly, then turned to the left. Many thoughts filled my mind as I rambled along, and when, presently, I found myself at Hyde Park Corner, I decided I would stroll down into Belgravia and see if a new caretaker had been installed at the house in Belgrave Street in place of poor old Taylor.

To my surprise the house was boarded up. Nearly every window was boarded, even the top-floor windows. It looked like a house in which people have died of some plague.

I found the policeman on the beat, and questioned him. Inclined at first to be sullen and uncommunicative, he became cordial and confidential soon after my fingers had slipped a coin into his hand.

“So you haven’t heard anything about number a hundred and two,” he said some moments later. “About here it’s causin’ a bit o’ talk.”

“Indeed? In what way?”

He paused, as though reflecting whether he ought to tell me.

“Well, sir, it’s like this,” he said at last. “The ’ouse is, as you’ve seen, boarded up, and there’s nobody living there but—”

“Yes? But what?”

“Well, for the last eight nights there’s been a light in a window on the first floor.”

“A light? But how could you see a light if there were one, with the windows boarded up?”

“Oh, it can be seen right enough, through the chinks between the boards.”

“Who has seen it?”

“I have—and others also.”

“Is it always in the same window?”

“Not always in the same window, but always on the same floor. Ah, no! On two nights there was a light on the second floor too.”

“And at what time is it seen?”

“Very late—not before two in the morning, as a rule.”

“And how long does it remain?”

“Sometimes for five or ten minutes, sometimes as much as half-an-hour, or more. Three nights ago two windows were lit up at one-twenty and remained lit until two-fifty-five.”

“And do you mean to say nobody goes into the house or comes out of it?”

“Nobody. Nobody at all. It’s being watched front and back. Twice we’ve been in and hunted the place all over—we got leave to do this—but there was nothing, nor no one nowhere.”

“Oh,” I exclaimed incredulously, “that is a ridiculous thing to say. If a light really appears and disappears, there must be somebody in the house. Probably there’s a secret entrance of which you know nothing about.”

“There are only three entrances,” he answered quickly, “and one of ’em can’t rightly be called an entrance. There’s the front door, and the back door for the tradesmen, and then there’s a queer little way out into Crane’s alley—we can’t think why that entrance was ever made.”

The “queer little way out” I at once guessed to be the dark, underground, narrow little stone cellar-passage through which Vera had led me when we had escaped together on the day I had discovered her hidden in the house.

“And are the entrances all locked?” I asked.

“Oh, you may take that from me,” he replied. “They are locked right enough, and nobody don’t get the keys, neither.”

At that moment, oddly enough, the thought of the curious-looking brown stain in the corner of the ceiling on the first floor, that I had noticed on the day I had explored the unoccupied house, came suddenly back into my mind.

I must have talked to the policeman for fully fifteen minutes, and had asked him many questions. Before the end of that time I had, however, discovered that he was of a superstitious nature, and that he did not at all like what was happening.

I pondered for a little while, then I said—

“Look here, officer”—if you want to please a policeman always call him “officer”—“I am going to peep into that room, and you must help me.”

“Me, sir?”

“Yes, you. What are policemen for, except to help people? Now listen. I can’t, of course, get into the house, but I am going to arrange for a ladder to be brought here to-night that will reach to the first-floor windows. This street is, I’m sure, quite deserted in the small hours of the morning. The ladder will be hoisted up by the men who bring it, you will keep an eye up and down the street to see that nobody comes along to interrupt us. Then I shall crawl up the ladder and peer in at the window. If there is space between the boards wide enough to admit light, the space must be wide enough to enable me to peep into the room.”

“It’s a bit risky, sir.”

“Risky? Not the slightest. I’ll make it worth your while to undertake what risk there is. So that is understood. You are on duty here to-night at two o’clock?”

“Oh, yes, sir, but—”

“There is no ‘but.’ I shall see you later, then.”

I returned to King Street. My man John had a friend who worked for a builder, he told me. This friend of his would, he said, arrange everything, and be delighted to. Oh, yes, he had a ladder. He had several ladders. He could bring along single-handed, a ladder the length I wanted, and set it in position.

This was satisfactory. I went to a theatre in order to kill time, for I felt excited and terribly impatient. I had not told Vera of my plan, or Faulkner, or indeed anybody but the policeman.

The builder’s man was punctual to the minute. He had concealed the ladder in Crane’s Court before dark, thinking suspicion might be aroused were he to be seen carrying a ladder through the streets of London in the middle of the night. Two o’clock had just struck, when he crept stealthily into Belgrave Square with the ladder over his shoulder. Acting upon my instructions, he laid it flat upon the pavement. Impatiently I waited. A quarter-past two chimed on some far-distant clock. Still the windows remained in darkness.

Twenty minutes passed... Twenty-five... I began to feel anxious. Would this mysterious visitor not come to-night? That would indeed be a bitter disappointment. Ah!

The light had appeared. It was on the first floor. Now it percolated feebly between the boards covering two windows.

At a signal from me the man picked up the ladder, raised it to a vertical position, then let it rest, without a sound, against the window-sill.

“All right, sir,” he whispered to me.

Restraining my excitement, I began slowly, cautiously, to creep up the rungs.

Chapter Twenty One.

Contains a Further Surprise.

The boards covering the windows were about an inch thick, but, with the slovenliness unfortunately too common among British workmen, they had been nailed up “anyhow,” and between the two boards immediately facing me was a space an inch or more. Through that, I saw the weak light, as of a candle.

Two rungs higher up I climbed, leant forward, and endeavoured to glue my eye to this crack, in order to peer into the room.

It was by no means easy to see more than a narrow strip of the room, and that strip was empty. Guessing, however, that something I should be able to see must soon happen in the room, I decided to wait. I suppose I must have waited about five minutes—it seemed like a quarter of an hour—my eye was beginning to ache, and I had a crick in my neck, when of a sudden a shadow fell across the bare boards—the strip of floor that I could see—and then a second shadow. A moment later a man stood in the room, his back to the window, a light in his hand. At once I recognised the man by his colossal stature.

It was the dark giant I knew as Davies.

What was he doing? I could not see. Some one was beside him, also with his back turned. I started. This second man was Sir Charles Thorold, undoubtedly. They were conversing, but I could not, of course, catch their words.

Sir Charles was bending down. He seemed to be on all fours. Now Davies was on all fours too. They were both crawling on all fours about the floor, as though searching for something.

With breathless interest I watched them. They had passed out of my range of vision, though a pair of feet were still visible. The feet remained in sight for quite a long time, ten minutes or more. Then they too disappeared.

“What on earth are they about?” was my mental comment. “What can they be seeking?”

It had seemed obvious that they had been trying to find something.

Still on the ladder I waited, hoping that something more might happen, but I saw nothing more, and presently the light was extinguished. I judged that some one had carried the candle into another room. Apparently there was no object in waiting longer on the ladder, so I cautiously descended to the ground again.

I felt satisfied, and yet dissatisfied, with the result of my observation.

It was satisfactory to know who the people were who visited the house in this mysterious way in the small hours. But it was unsatisfactory not to have found out why they went there at that time of night, and thus secretively—or why they went there at all.

Just as I reached the ground, thought of the advertisement I had noticed in the Morning Post floated back into my mind—

“Meet me 2.”

Could there be any connexion between that advertisement and these mysterious visits at two in the morning? It seemed unlikely, and yet it was somewhat curious.

I did not tell the expectant constable more than I deemed it good that he should know. I told him I thought I had discovered the presence of two men in the house, but I did not say they were men I knew and could identify.

He was pleased with the half-sovereign I gave him, and hinted clearly that he would always be glad to render me any service in his power. It always interests me to observe how readily the milk of human kindness comes oozing out where one least expects it, provided the “source” whence it springs is “handled” in the right way.

As he had said this, I determined to take him at his word. I had seen enough to excite my curiosity and to stimulate in me a keen desire actually to enter the house. But how could this be arranged?

Everything is possible of accomplishment, I find, if you set about it in the right way. I had obtained from the policeman his private address in Rodney Street, Walworth Road, and, on the following evening, when he was off duty, I looked in to see him.

Rarely have I been more welcomed by anybody than I was by that policeman and his wife, or more hospitably entertained. Plenty of men of about my own social standing would, I know, think me quite mad if I told them I had hobnobbed with “a common policeman.” The club would have been shocked. “My dear fellah,” I can hear them saying, “you really should draw the line somewhere, don’t you know. A gentleman is a gentleman, and a policeman is—well, is a policeman—eh, what? He may be an exceedingly good and honest fellah, and all that sort of thing, don’t you know, but, after all, we must keep to people in our own station of life, or we shall be dining with each other’s valets next, and one’s friend’s butler will be asking one to lunch with him at his club. I’m cosmopolitan myself, up to a point, but really one must keep the classes distinct, we must keep ourselves aloof from the common people, or where will it end, don’t you know? As I say, a gentleman is a gentleman, and a man who isn’t a gentleman, well, he isn’t a gentleman—you can’t get away from that.”

To which my only reply would be that, to my knowledge, there are plenty of “gentlemen” who are not gentlemen, and quite a sensible proportion of the men we do self-complacently term “bounders” who are men of high ideals and of great refinement.

During supper, to which he had asked me half-apologetically, the constable entertained me with many good stories, for he had been seventeen years in the Metropolitan Police, and had seen much of life in London during that time. I waited until we had finished supper, and his wife had retired, before submitting for his approval the proposal I had come to make.

Mine was quite a simple proposal, though not devoid of risk, yet the plan could not well be carried out without his help. Briefly, I was determined to force an entrance to the house in Belgrave Street on the following night, and the way I had decided to get in was through the dark cellar-passage which opened on to Crane’s Alley.

During the afternoon I had visited the Alley, and examined the lock of the gate at the end of the iron railings which topped the wall of the little yard, also the lock of the small door that led into the black cellar-passage which ultimately led into the house. Both, I saw, could easily be forced. Indeed, there would be no need to force the lock of the iron gate. I could climb over the gate, as I had done that day. All this I told the constable, and he calmly nodded.

“And you want me to abet you in this crime,” he said at last, with a grin, as he loaded his pipe anew.

“I do,” I said. “And—I’ll make it worth your while.”

“Well, it’s house-breaking, you know,” he observed drily, filling the room with clouds of smoke. “And you know what the sentence for breaking into a house at night is?”

“Never mind about the sentence,” I answered quickly. “I shall have to serve that—and not you! But there won’t be any sentence, because there won’t be any capture—if you help me. And you are going to help me. Oh, yes, you are.”

We both laughed.

“You are a one, sir—an’ no mistake!” he exclaimed. “Well, yes, I’ll do me best and charnce it. I’m a bit of a sport meself when they gives me arf a charnce.”

And so it was settled. It was this policeman’s duty to keep an eye on Crane’s Alley, which was included in his beat. Well, he would for once forget to keep an eye on it, while the sergeant was out of the way. More, he would lend a hand when the time came to force the lock of the door in the little yard. After that he would be at liberty to slip back to Belgrave Street and resume his monotonous tramp.

And all this would happen on the following night, or rather, about two o’clock next morning.

When I left him it was nine o’clock, and, feeling in high spirits, I drove to the Grand to tell Vera my plan, for I felt I must tell somebody. She was alone in the private sitting-room overlooking the thousand lights of Trafalgar Square, and I sat with my arm about her.

“It is madness—sheer madness,” she exclaimed, when I had outlined my scheme, “and if you will take my advice—you know my advice is generally sound—you will at once abandon the idea, Dick. It is very well for you to say that my father is your friend, but you don’t know my father—you don’t know him as I know him. There are two sides to his character. Indeed, I would say he is really two men in one. The man you know is very different from the other man—my father as you have never seen him, and as I hope you never will see him. He can become perfectly savage. He has a temper that is altogether unmanageable when once it gets the better of him. It doesn’t often, but when it does—

“No, don’t do it, dear, don’t, I beg of you. I ask you not to. I beg you not to if you really love me.”

“I must,” I answered, with a firmness that surprised her. “I have gone too far now to draw back, even if I wanted to, which I don’t. I am going to see this thing through. I’m going to discover the mystery of that house. I don’t care what risks I take, or what happens, but I am going to see for myself what all this secret business means.”

To my surprise she began to laugh.

“Dick,” she said, “I sometimes wonder if you are quite ‘all there.’ Why on earth can’t you let people alone, and mind your own business? Supposing Whichelo should turn upon you—good Heavens, he could squeeze the life out of you with one hand.”

“Whichelo?” I asked, puzzled, still holding her soft hand in mine.

“Yes. You said when you looked in at the window you saw Whichelo with my father.”

Instantly I put two and two together. So the big, dark giant whom I had known only as Davies was called Whichelo!

At last I had found out!

“And why should this man with the funny name, this Whichelo, want to ‘squeeze the life out of me’ as you so picturesquely put it?” I inquired carelessly, rising and crossing to the window, the blinds of which were not drawn.

“For the simple reason,” she answered, “that of course he won’t allow you to reveal the secret that has been kept so well, and so long. He and my father would stick at nothing to prevent that—believe me. I tell you again, I know my father.”

Somehow, though she spoke calmly, I felt she had some very strong incentive for not wanting me to enter the house and see what was happening there. She seemed to dread my carrying out my plan. Yet apparently she was not anxious on my account. But my mind was now made up. Nothing, I was determined, should stop me. I believed that I was on the eve of making discoveries which would lead to the unravelling of the mystery of Houghton Park, and the mysteries which had followed.

“Good-night, darling,” I said, going back to her. I took her in my arms and kissed her. As I did so, I thought I felt her sob.

“Why, Vera, what is the matter?” I exclaimed, releasing her.

“The matter?” she said, forcing a smile. “Nothing. Oh! nothing at all, dear. Why?”

“You—you seemed worried.”

“Oh, you’re mistaken. Why should I be?” She gave vent to a little hysterical laugh. I kissed her again, and told her to “cheer up.” Then I left her. I did not dare trust myself longer in her presence, lest she should, after all, persuade me to change my mind.

Chapter Twenty Two.

A Secret is Disclosed.

The night was still—clear and starlit.

Between two and three in the morning is the one hour when, in London, the very houses seem to slumber, save in a few districts, such as Fleet Street, Covent Garden and its purlieus, where night and day are alike—equally active, equally feverish—those streets which never sleep.

I wore an old suit, a golf cap, shoes with rubber soles, and in my jacket-pocket carried an electric torch. I had decided not to take a pistol. After all, I was not bent on mischief. Also I was going, as I supposed, among friends. Even if Sir Charles were to turn upon me I could not believe he would do me an injury, in spite of my beloved’s warning. He and I had known each other such a long time.

Vera, finding that nothing would dissuade me, had ended by giving me the bunch of keys which I had forgotten she still possessed—the keys I had taken from old Taylor’s pocket. “If you are determined to do this mad thing, Dick,” she had said to me, kissing me fondly, “you may as well get in with the key, instead of house-breaking.” On the bunch were the key which would unlock the iron gate, and the one of the little door. This greatly simplified matters, for there were no bolts on the little door, as there were upon the front door and on the tradesmen’s door.

The light appeared in the same window on the first floor at exactly twenty minutes past two. Standing in Belgrave Street with my constable friend, who was now on duty, I saw it flicker suddenly. Without further delay we both went round Crane’s Alley. Nobody was about. Not a sound anywhere. Noiselessly I unlocked the iron gate, then the little door...

“Good luck, sir,” the policeman whispered, as I crept into the dark, low-roofed passage. “And if you want any help, remember you’ve got the whistle.”

There were two little stone-walled cellar-passages, and I took the one to the right. Before I had gone a yard I uttered an exclamation. I was up against a great veil of grey cobwebs which hung from everywhere and was stretched right across the stone passage. So thick were they that I had to push into them to make my way along. How I regretted I had not brought a stick! Suddenly something damp creepy, large, horrible, ran across my face, then another, and another.

Ugh! My blood ran cold at their touch, for I hate spiders.

I pulled out my electric torch. Its sudden glare sent scores of spiders scurrying in all directions. I could actually hear them—nay, I could smell them, and, wherever I looked, I could see them. The sight made me shudder, for they were not, apparently, house-spiders of the usual variety—but large, fat, oval-bodied things, with curved legs, and with protruding heads that seemed to look at me. Indeed, I don’t think that in the whole of my life I have ever spent moments that I less like to dwell upon than the two minutes it took me to push my way through that loathsome tangle of evil-smelling cobwebs alive with spiders. I would not go through such an experience again for any sum.

At last I got through them, and I recollect thinking, as I emerged, how foolish I had been to take the wrong turning.

Of course, when Vera had led me out we must have come by the other passage, as there had been no cobwebs then. And that led me further to wonder whether at that time the passage had not been in regular use by some person or persons. I did not for a moment believe that old Taylor had been so conscientious as to keep either passage free of cobwebs, seeing how utterly neglected had been the rest of the house.

In the servants’ quarters, where I presently found myself, I recognised at once that same acrid smell of dry rot I had noticed when last in the house, only now it was more “pronounced.” Noiselessly I crept along, in my rubber shoes, to the hall. Everywhere the deathly stillness was so intense that one seemed almost to feel it. Cautiously I crept up the front stairs, keeping close to the wall in order to prevent their creaking. My electric torch proved most useful.

I was outside the door of the drawing-room that overlooked Belgrave Street—the first room I had entered on that previous occasion—the room into which I had peered the night before, as I stood upon the ladder. A tiny ray of faint light percolated through the keyhole. I listened, hardly breathing, but could hear no sound at all, except my own heart-beats.

Should I turn the handle gently, slowly push the door ajar, and peep in? It might squeak. Should I fling open the door and rush in? Faced with a problem, I was undecided. I admit that at that moment I felt inclined to run away. Instead, I stood motionless, hesitating, frightened at my own temerity. Had I, after all, been wise in disregarding Vera’s good advice?

I thought of that curious brown stain I remembered so distinctly upon the ceiling in this very room. It had been in the right hand corner—the corner farthest from me. What was above that corner? Ah, I knew just where that spot would be in the room above.

Suddenly an idea struck me. I would creep up to the next floor and enter the room above. I had taken from the bunch about eight keys I thought might prove of use. Vera had told me which they were. All were loose in different pockets, each with a tag tied to it, bearing the name of the room it belonged to.

The room upstairs was in darkness, but the door of it was not locked. Cautiously I entered, pushed to the door behind me, and then pressed the button of my electric torch.

Everything was in disorder. Most of the dusty furniture had been pushed into a corner. Some of it was still covered with sheets, but much of it was not. Clearly people had been in here a good deal of late. I picked my way between various pieces of furniture across to the corner I sought. On arriving there I started, and at once switched off my light.

In the floor at that corner, was a big hole, a very big hole indeed, several feet across.

The carpet had been rolled back. The boards had all been ripped up. Two of the beams below them had been sawed across, and about three feet of each of these beams removed. The ceiling of the room below had been smashed away—this I judged to be the exact spot where the brown stain had been—and, as I cautiously bent forward, and craned my neck, I could see right down into the drawing-room.

Voices were murmuring—men’s voices. The sight upon which my gaze rested made me recoil.

Stretched out on the floor, right below me, was a human body—shrivelled, dry, quite brown, but undoubtedly a body. It looked exactly like a mummy, a mummy five feet or more in length. Beside it knelt two figures. As I looked, I saw them slowly lift the body from the floor, one man holding either end of it. In a moment or two they had carried it out of sight. And the men who had taken it away were Sir Charles Thorold and the man I had known as Davies, but whose name I now knew to be Whichelo.

This was more, a great deal more than I had expected or even dreamt I should see when I entered the house of mystery.

What could it all mean? Had there been foul play? And if so, had Thorold had a hand in it? I could not think this possible. And yet what other construction could I possibly place upon what I had just witnessed?

I did not know what to think, much less had I any idea of what I ought now to do. And then, all at once, an inspiration came to me.

I took several long breaths. Then, setting my voice at a low, unnatural pitch, I gave vent to a deep, long-drawn-out wail, gradually raising my voice until it ended in a weird shriek.

The stillness below became intense. I paused for perhaps half-a-minute. Then I slowly repeated the wail, ending this time in a kind of unearthly yell.

I knew I had achieved my purpose—knew that the men below were terrified, panic-stricken. I could picture them kneeling beside the shrivelled corpse, literally petrified by horror, their eyes starting from their sockets, their faces bloodless.

Then I walked with measured tread about the floor, the dull “plunk plunk” of my rubber soles sounding, in the depth of the night, and in the stillness of that unoccupied house—ghostly even to me. Next I began to push the furniture about, and a moment later I slammed the door.

There was a wild, a frantic stampede. Both men had sprung to their feet and were dashing headlong down the stairs. I pursued them in the darkness! They heard the quick patter of my rubber shoes upon the stairs behind them, and it seemed to give them wings. Furniture was knocked spinning in the darkness. A terrific crash echoed through the house as, in their blind rush, they hurled on to the stone floor of the hall a big china vase the height of a man which had stood upon a pedestal. A door slammed. Then another, more faintly, a long way down some corridor.

Then once more all was still.

Chuckling at the grim humour of the situation, I went slowly up the stairs again. There was still a light in the first-floor room. I pushed the door open and walked boldly in.

I halted, surprise had petrified me.

The sight that my eyes rested upon I shall not forget as long as ever I live!

Chapter Twenty Three.

Contains Another Revelation.

I stood still in horror, my eyes riveted upon the shrivelled human body. It was stretched out upon several chairs placed side by side. The sight was most gruesome.

Near it, upon the floor, was an ordinary packing-case, in the bottom of which a quantity of wood shavings had been pressed down, to form a sort of bed. At once I realised that this box had been prepared for the reception of the body.

It was about to be smuggled out of the house!

But how did it come to be there? Whose body was it? How long had it been dead? And how had the man—for I saw it was the body of a man, apparently a man of middle-age—come by his death?

It was not the sight of the Thing that had startled me, however, for I had expected to see it there.

What had taken my breath away had been the sight of great heaps of coin upon the floor, gold coin which had evidently just been emptied out of the little sacks close by. Near by were some glass bottles containing powdered metal, some bottles of coloured fluid, and various implements—a couple of metal moulds, a ladle, a miniature hand-lathe, several files, and some curiously-fashioned tools which I judged must be finishing tools used in the manufacture of coin.

The truth was plain—a ghastly unexpected truth.

Thorold and Whichelo were, or had been, in some way concerned in issuing base coin, though to me it seemed hardly possible that Sir Charles could actually be implicated. I picked up a handful of the shining coins, and let them fall between my fingers in a golden stream. If they were not golden French louis they were certainly fine imitations. All the coins were French twenty and ten-franc pieces, I noticed. There were no British coins among them, nor were there coins of any other nation. In all, there must have been several thousands of them.

When I had recovered from my surprise, I began to examine the body more closely. With my electric torch I ran a flash all along it and to and fro. It was the body of a man about thirty, I definitely decided, and it was swathed in brown rags. I had seen bodies in the catacombs in Rome and in Paris that looked like this, and also in South America I had seen some.

South America! My thought of that continent set up a fresh train of thought in my mind. It made me think of Mexico, and the thought of Mexico, though not in South America, brought the tall, dark man, Whichelo, back to me vividly. He had been in Mexico a great deal at one time, Vera had told me. And this mummified body lying in front of me—yes, it singularly resembled the mummified bodies I had seen in Mexico when on my travels about the world.

What had caused death? Critical inspection with my electric torch showed distinctly a fracture at the base of the skull, as though it had been struck with some blunt implement, such as a hammer.

Yes, there could be no doubt that the skull had been severely fractured. I should have held the theory that the poor fellow had been attacked from behind, felled to the ground with some iron weapon. I wondered greatly how long the man had been dead. No expert knowledge was needed to decide that he must have been dead a number of years. And where had the body been hidden all this time?

Instinctively I glanced at the ceiling—at the gaping hole in it—and instantly I knew. This mummified body had been hidden away, buried between the ceiling and floor! It had been in that corner, where the hole now was. And the brown stain I had noticed in the corner of the ceiling...

But the money? Why, of course, the money must have been there, too. A thought struck me. I picked up some of the coins again, and glanced at the dates. Twenty-five or thirty years ago they were dated, yet they looked quite new. Clearly, then, they had not been in circulation. Paulton’s significant remark returned to me—the remark he had made that night in the room in Château d’Uzerche, when I had said something about not revealing Sir Charles Thorold’s secret.

Could there be some hidden connexion between this discovery I had made, Thorold’s secret, and the charge upon which Paulton was “wanted?”

I spent some time in examining the room and its contents. Then I explored other parts of the house.

Was I now gradually approaching the solution of Sir Charles Thorold’s secret?

I believed it more than likely that I might now at last be well on my way to solving the mystery of Houghton Park and the Thorolds’ sudden flight. That Sir Charles and his big friend would not return that night I fully believed. They might, or might not, be superstitious, but there could be no doubt I had terrified them thoroughly. If they returned at all it would be in the daytime, I conjectured.

What was to be done? How should I act?

I decided that the only thing to do would be to go out into the street and inform the constable of all that had happened. I had told him I would not stay long in the house in any case, and my prolonged absence might be making him feel uneasy.

I left by the front door—which I found securely bolted and chained on the inside—and there found the constable flashing his bull’s-eye lantern upon the door, and with his truncheon ready drawn.

“Hush!” I whispered, and he smiled upon seeing me, and at once replaced his truncheon.

“I was beginning to feel very anxious on your account, sir,” he said. “I ’arf wondered who might be a-comin’ out. Well, sir, did you see anything?”

“I should say so,” I answered, and then, as briefly as I could, I told him nearly everything.

I persuaded him to come in then and there.

“Well, look at that, now!” he said, as I showed him first the mummified body, then the sacks of gold, and pointed out to him the great hole cut in the ceiling. “Well, look at that, now!” he repeated.

“The awkward part of the affair is this,” I said at last. “Who is going to lodge information? I don’t care to, for, if I do, inquiries will be made as to how I came to be on the premises at all, and how I managed to get in, and it won’t look well if I am proved, on my own showing, to have entered the place secretly in the middle of the night. Again, I don’t want to lodge information against Sir Charles Thorold. Why should I? He has always been my friend. Nor, for that matter, do I want to prefer any sort of charge against Whichelo. So far as the body is concerned, we may be quite wrong in conjecturing that there has been foul play. Indeed, there is no actual proof that the mummy was hidden in the ceiling of the room, though personally I think it must have been. Everything points to it. And you, Bennett, can’t very well give information either without compromising yourself as well as me. Your inspector would want to know how you managed to get into the house, and what right you had to enter it.”

I paused, considering, while he removed his helmet and scratched his head.

“I’ll tell you what I think we had better do,” I said at last.

“Well, sir, what?” he inquired eagerly.

“Nothing. Nothing at all. Go back to your beat. I’ll bolt and chain the front door when you’re gone. Then I’ll put out the light in this room, and make my way out of the house by the way I entered it.”

“But the two men,” the policeman said quickly. “Where can they have got to? They can’t have left the premises.”

“You may depend upon it they have,” I answered. “I feel pretty sure there must be some secret entrance to this house, that they alone know. The back door, too, is bolted and chained on the inside, and they can hardly have entered the way I did—ugh!” and I shuddered again at the thought of those horrible, hairy-legged spiders scampering over my bare flesh.

“Meet me 2.”

Again that odd little advertisement arose in my thoughts. I would watch the front page of the Morning Post for a day or two. Perhaps another advertisement might appear that would help me.

Early next day I went and told Vera everything. I found her seated in the lounge on the right of the hall.

She listened eagerly, and I saw at once that the news excited her a good deal, yet to my surprise she made no comment, but changed the subject of conversation by remarking—

“Violet brought Frank Faulkner here yesterday evening. He is engaged to be married to her. He has broken off his engagement to Gladys Deroxe, and I am very glad he has,” she declared.

“Really,” I exclaimed. “Well, frankly I’m not surprised, for I believe he has been in love with Violet from the moment he first met her. But how did Miss Deroxe take it? Was there a dreadful scene?”

“Scene? There was no scene at all, it appears. What happened was simply this. Gladys discovered that Frank had brought Violet over from the Riviera, that she was staying here at his expense, and that he seemed to be extremely attentive to her. Now, a sensible girl would have asked her future husband, in a case of that sort, to come to see her and explain everything. That, certainly, is what I should have done.”

“And what did Miss Deroxe do?”

“Do? Good Heavens, she sat down then and there and wrote him a letter—oh! such a letter! He showed it to me. I have never in my life read anything so insulting. She ended by telling him in writing that she had never really cared for him, and that she hoped she would never see him again. In one place she wrote: ‘I might have guessed the kind of man you are by the kind of company you keep. I know all about your friend, Richard Ashton. He associates with dreadful people. I am only glad I have found you out before it was too late!’ Those were her words. So you see the kind of reputation you have acquired, my dear Dick.”

I laughed—laughed uproariously. I, “the associate of dreadful people,” I, a member of that hot-bed of conventions and of respectability, Brooks’s Club. The whole thing was delicious.

“When will Frank and Violet be here again?”

I asked presently, after we had ascended together to the private sitting-room.