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: —
“Yes. Fred Kinghorne is here. He is an American, and beyond the Marstons has, I believe, no friends in England. He is an excellent bridge player and has won heavily this week. He has told me that he is engaged to a girl named Appleton, daughter of a Wall Street broker, and that she and her mother are to meet him in Naples on the twentieth, for a tour in Italy. He leaves here next Saturday, and will stay at the Cecil for ten days prior to leaving for Italy. He is evidently very well off, and one of the reasons he is in England is to buy some jewellery as a wedding present for his bride. The Marstons tell me that he is the son of old Jacob Kinghorne, the great Californian financier. I hope this information will satisfy you. – S.”
Harewolde, as all the world knows, was one of the centres of the smart set. The Marstons entertained the royalties frequently, and there were rumours of bridge parties and high stakes. Why had Sybil given this curious information? Had the young man Kinghorne been marked down as one of the victims and enticed to that fatal house?
There was no envelope, and the commencement of the letter was abrupt, as though it had been enclosed with some unsuspicious communication.
Having read it, I laid it down without comment, for it was my last desire to incriminate the poor unhappy woman, who, shorn of her brilliancy, was now leading such a strange and lowly life in that dull South London street.
Yet could it be possible that she had acted for these blackguards as their secret agent in society?
The suggestion held me stupefied.
At last Edwards ascended the stairs with Horton and another constable in plain clothes, and scrambled across the settle to where we stood. He carried in his hand a strong ladder of silken rope – which Pickering incidentally remarked had once been the property of Crisp, the notable Hampstead burglar – together with another lantern, a ball of string and a length of stout rope.
Marvin and Edwards recrossed the improvised bridge, while Pickering, Horton and myself remained upon the landing. Then, when we drew the settle away the two men pressed upon the stairs, causing the whole to move forward upon the hinges at the edge of the landing and disclosing the black abyss. As soon as the pressure was released, however, the stairs swung back into their place again, there being either a spring or a counter-balancing weight beneath.
This was the first difficulty that faced us, but it was soon overcome by inserting the settle when the stairs were pushed apart, thus keeping them open. To the stout oak pillar which formed the head of the banisters Pickering fixed the rope-ladder firmly, and with Marvin tried its strength.
“I’ll go down first, sir,” volunteered Edwards. “You’ve got the lantern. Will you light it and let it down by the string after me?”
So with all of us breathlessly excited the silken ladder was thrown across to Edwards, whose round face beamed at the project of subterranean exploration. Then, when the lamp was lit and tied upon the string, he put his foot into the ladder, swung himself over the edge of the stairs and descended into the darkness, Pickering lowering the lamp after him.
We stood peering down at his descending figure, but could discern but little save the glimmering of the light and the slow swinging of the ladder, like a pendulum.
“Great Moses!” we heard him ejaculate in amazement.
Yet down, down, down he went until it became apparent that he must have reached the end of the ladder, and now be sliding down the extra length of rope which Pickering had attached.
“All right, sir!” came up his voice, sounding cavernous from the pitch darkness. “It’s a jolly funny place down here, an’ no mistake. Will you come down? I’m releasing the lantern. Send down another, please. We’ll want it.”
Pickering hauled in the string, attached Marvin’s bull’s-eye to it, and let it down again at once. The pit was of great depth, as shown by the length of cord. Then with an agility which would have done credit to a much younger man, he swung himself over on to the ladder.
“If you’d like to come down, Mr Hughes, you can follow me,” he exclaimed, as he disappeared into the darkness. “Horton, hold your light over me. You two stay here. If anybody enters the place, arrest them quickly.”
“Very well, sir,” answered the man Horton, and the inspector went deeper down until only the trembling of the ladder betokened his presence there.
“All right, Mr Hughes. Come down, but be careful,” he cried up presently, his voice sounding far away. “You’ll have to slide down the rope for the last twelve feet or so. Cling tight, and you’ll be all right.”
I grasped the ladder, placed my foot into the first loop, and then with the light held over me, went down, down, first into a place which seemed large and cavernous, and presently down a kind of circular well with black slimy walls which seemed to descend into the very bowels of the earth.
Below I could hear the sound of rushing waters, but above them was the inspector’s encouraging voice, crying, “All right. Now then, take the rope in your legs and slip straight down.”
I did so, and a moment later found myself up to my knees in an icy cold stream, which swept and gurgled about me.
Pickering and his assistant stood at my side, their lamps shining upon the dark subterranean flood.
“Is this the place you remember?” asked the inspector, shining his bull’s-eye around and revealing that we were at the bottom of a kind of circular well which had on either side two low arches or culverts. From the right the water rushed in with a swirling current, and by the opposite culvert it rushed out, gurgling and filling the arch almost to its keystone. I saw that all the black slimy masonry was of long flat stones – a relic of ancient London it seemed to be.
“This isn’t the place where I found myself,” I said, much surprised.
“No, I suppose not,” remarked the inspector. “This is fresh water, from a spring somewhere, and through that ancient culvert there’s probably a communication with the main sewer. When you fell, you were swept down there and out into the main sewer at once – like a good many others who have come down here. It’s an awful death-trap. Look up there,” and he shone his lamp above my head.
“Don’t you see that a bar of iron has been driven into the wall – and driven there recently, too, or it would have rusted away long ago in this damp.”
“Well?” I said, not quite following him.
“That’s been put there so that the victims, in falling from the great height, should strike against it and be rendered unconscious before reaching the water. Look. There’s a bit of white stuff on it now – like silk from a lady’s evening dress!”
And sure enough I saw at the end of that iron bar a piece of white stuff fluttering in the draught, the grim relic of some unfortunate woman who had gone unconsciously to her death! The dank, gruesome place horrified me. Its terrible secrets held all three of us appalled. Even Pickering himself shuddered.
“To explore further is quite impossible,” he said. “That culvert leads into the main sewer, so we must leave its exploration to the sewermen. Lots of springs, of course, fall into the sewers, but the exact spots of their origin are unknown. They were found and connected when the sewers were constructed, and that’s all. My own opinion,” he added, “is that this place was originally the well of an ancient house, and that the blackguards discovered it in the cellar, explored it, ascertained that anything placed in it would be sucked down into that culvert, and then they opened up a way right through to the stairs.”
The inspector’s theory appeared to me to be a sound one.
I expressed fear of the rising of the water with the automatic flushing of the sewers, but he pointed out that where we stood must be on a slightly higher level, judging from the way the water rushed away down the culvert, while on the side of the well there was no recent mark of higher water, thus bearing out his idea of a spring.
Edwards swarmed up the rope and managed to detach the piece of silk from the iron bar. When he handed it to us we saw that though faded and dirty it had been a piece of rich brocade, pale blue upon a cream ground, while attached was a tiny edging of pale blue chiffon – from a woman’s corsage, Pickering declared it to be – perhaps a scrap of the dress of the owner of that emerald necklet up above!
After a minute inspection of the grim ancient walls which rose from a channel of rock worn smooth by the action of the waters of ages, Pickering swarmed up the dangling rope, gained the ladder and climbed back again, an example which I quickly followed, although my legs were so chilled to the bone by the icy water that at first I found considerable difficulty in ascending.
Having gained the landing and been followed by Edwards, we drew up the ladder, removed the settle, allowed the fatal stairs to close again, and then bridged it over as before.
While we had been below Horton, who was a practised carpenter, had mended the latch of the front door, so that there should be no suspicion of our entry. We all clambered across the settle, descended the stairs to the basement, and were soon engaged in searching the downstairs rooms and cellar. We had found that the communication between the head of the well and the top of the house was a roughly-constructed shaft of boards when, of a sudden, while standing at the foot of the kitchen stairs we were startled by hearing the sharp click of a key in the lock of the front door above.
In an instant we were silent, and stood together breathless and listening. The dark slide slipped across the bull’s-eye.
It was truly an exciting moment.
Pickering, followed by Edwards and Marvin, crept noiselessly up the stairs, and while the person entering apparently had some difficulty with the lock they waited in the darkness.
I stood behind the inspector, my heart beating quickly, listening intently. It was an exciting moment standing ready in the pitch blackness of that silent house of doom.
The latch caught, probably on account of its recent disarrangement, but at last the key lifted it, the door opened, somebody entered the hall, and quietly re-closed the door.
Next instant Pickering sprang from his hiding-place, crying, —
“I arrest you on suspicion of being implicated in certain cases of wilful murder committed in this house!”
Horton at that same moment flashed his lamp full upon the face of the person who had entered there so stealthily, and who, startled by the dread accusation, stood glaring like some wild animal brought to bay, but motionless as though turned to stone.
The lamp-flash revealed a white, haggard countenance. I saw it; I recognised it!
A loud cry of horror and amazement escaped me. Was I dreaming? No. It was no dream, but a stern, living reality – a truth that bewildered and staggered me utterly – a grim, awful truth which deprived me of the power of speech.