The Door with Seven Locks

Edgar Wallace

Chapter 1

 

DICK MARTIN'S last official job (as he believed) was to pull in Lew Pheeney, who was wanted in connection with the Helborough bank robbery. He found Lew in a little Soho cafe, just as he was finishing his coffee.

"What's the idea, colonel?" asked Lew, almost genially, as he got his hat.

"The inspector wants to talk to you about that Helborough job," said Dick.

Lew's nose wrinkled in contempt.

"Helborough grandmothers!" he said scornfully. "I'm out of that bank business - thought you knew it. What are you doing in the force, Martin? They told me that you'd run into money and had quit."

"I'm quitting. You're my last bit of business."

"Too bad you're falling down on the last lap!" grinned Lew. "I've got forty - five well - oiled alibis. I'm surprised at you, Martin. You know I don't 'blow' banks; locks are my speciality - -"

"What were you doing at ten o'clock on Tuesday night?"

A broad smile illuminated the homely face of the burglar.

"If I told you, you'd think I was lying."

"Give me a chance," pleaded Dick, his blue eyes twinkling.

Lew did not reply at once. He seemed to be pondering the dangers of too great frankness. But when he had seen all sides of the matter, he spoke the truth.

"I was doing a private job - a job I don't want to talk about. It was dirty, but honest."

"And were you well paid?" asked his captor, polite but incredulous.

"I was - I got one hundred and fifty pounds on account. That makes you jump, but it is the truth. I was picking locks, certainly the toughest locks I've ever struck, and it was a kind of horrible job I wouldn't do again for a car - load of money. You don't believe me, but I can prove that I spent the night at the Royal Arms, Chichester, that I was there at eight o'clock to dinner and at eleven o'clock to sleep. So you can forget all that Helborough bank stuff. I know the gang that did it, and you know 'em too, and we don't change cards."

They kept Lew in the cells all night whilst inquiries were pursued. Remarkably enough, he had not only stayed at the Royal Arms at Chichester, but had stayed in his own name; and it was true that at a quarter to eleven, before the Hedborough bank robbers had left the premises, he was taking a drink in his room, sixty miles away. So authority released Lew in the morning and Dick went into breakfast with him, because, between the professional thief - taker and the professional burglar there is no real ill - feeling, and Sub - Inspector Richard Martin was almost as popular with the criminal classes as he was at police headquarters.

"Ho, Mr Martin, I'm not going to tell you anything more than I've already told you," said Lew good - humouredly. "And when you call me a liar, I'm not so much as hurt in my feelings. I got a hundred an' fifty pounds, and I'd have got a thousand if I'd pulled it off. You can guess all round it, but you'll never guess right."

Dick Martin was eyeing him keenly. "You've got a good story in your mind - spill it," he said.

He waited suggestively, but Lew Pheeney shook his head. "I'm not telling. The story would give away a man who's not a good fellow, and not one I admire; but I can't let my personal feelings get the better of me, and you'll have to go on guessing. And I'm not lying, I'll tell you how it happened." He gulped down a cup of hot coffee and pushed cup and saucer away from him. "I don't know this fellow who asked me to do the work - not personally. He's been in trouble for something or other, but that's no business of mine. One night he met me, introduced himself, and I went to his house - brr!" he shivered. "Martin, a crook is a pretty clean man - at least, all the crooks I know; and thieving's just a game with two players; me and the police. If they snooker me, good luck to 'em! If I can beat them, good luck to me! But there's some dirt that makes me sick, just makes my stomach turn over. When he told me the job he wanted me for, I thought he was joking, and my first idea was to turn it in right away. But I'm just the most curious creature that ever lived, and it was a new experience, so, after a lot of think, I said 'Yes'. Mind you, there was nothing dishonest in it. All he wanted to do was to take a peep at something. What was behind it I don't know. I don't want to talk about it, but the locks beat me."

"A lawyer's safe?" suggested the interested detective, The other shook his head. He turned the subject abruptly; spoke of his plans - he was leaving for the United States to join his brother, who was an honest builder.

"We're both going out of the game together, Martin," he smiled. "You're too good a man for a policeman, and I'm too much of a gentleman to be on the crook. I shouldn't be surprised if we met one of these days."

Dick went back to the Yard to make, as he thought, a final report to his immediate chief. Captain Sneed sniffed.

"That Lew Pheeney couldn't fall straight," he said; "if you dropped him down a well, he'd wear away the brickwork. Honest robber! He's got that out of a book. You think you've finished work, I suppose?" Dick nodded.

"Going to buy a country house and be a gentleman. Ride to hounds and take duchesses into dinner - what a hell of a life for a grown man!"

Dick Martin grinned at the sneer. He wanted very little persuasion to withdraw his resignation; already he was repenting - and, despite the attraction of authorship which beckoned ahead, he would have given a lot of money to recall the letter he had sent to the commissioner.

"It's a queer thing how money ruins a man," said Captain Sneed sadly. "Now if I had a six - figure legacy I should want to do nothing." His assistant might sneer in turn.

"You want to do nothing, anyway," he said; "you're lazy, Sneed - the laziest man who ever filled a chair at Scotland Yard."

The fat man, who literally filled and overflowed the padded office chair in which he half sat and half lay, a picture of inertia, raised his reproachful eyes to his companion.

"Insubordination," he murmured. "You're not out of the force till tomorrow - call me 'sir' and be respectful. I hate reminding you that you're a paltry sub - inspector and that I'm as near being a superintendent as makes no difference. It would sound snobbish. I'm not lazy, I'm lethargic. It's a sort of disease."

"You're fat because you're lazy, and you're lazy because you're fat," insisted the lean - faced young man. "It's a sort of vicious circle. Besides, you're rich enough to retire if you wanted."

Captain Sneed stroked his chin reflectively. He was a giant of a man, with shoulders of an ox and the height of a Grenadier, but he was admittedly inert. He sighed heavily, and, groping in a desk basket, produced a blue paper. "You're a common civilian tomorrow - but my slave today. Come along to Bellingham Library; there has been a complaint about stolen books."

Sub - Inspector Dick Martin groaned.

"It's not romantic, I admit," said his superior with a slow, broad smile; "kleptomania belongs to the dust and debris of detective work, but it is good for your soul. It will remind you, whilst you're loafing on the money you didn't earn, that there are a few thousand of your poor comrades wearin' their feet into ankles with fool inquiries like this!"

Dick (or 'Slick' as he was called for certain reasons) wondered as he walked slowly down the long corridor whether he was glad or sorry that police work lay behind him and that on the morrow he might pass the most exalted official without saluting. He was a 'larceny man', the cleverest taker of thieves the Yard had known. Sneed often said that he had the mind of a thief, and meant this as a compliment. He certainly had the skill. There was a memorable night when, urged thereto by the highest police official in London, he had picked the pocket of a Secretary of State, taken his watch, his pocket - book and his private papers, and not even the expert watchers saw him perform the fell deed.

Dick Martin came to the Yard from Canada, where his father had been governor of a prison. He was neither a good guardian of criminals or youth. Dick had the run of the prison, and could take a stick pin from a man's cravat before he had mastered the mysteries of algebra. Peter du Bois, a lifer, taught him to open almost any kind of door with a bent hairpin; Lew Andrevski, a frequent visitor to Port Stuart, made a specially small pack of cards out of the covers of the chapel prayer books; in order that the lad should be taught to conceal three cards in each tiny palm. If he had not been innately honest, the tuition might easily have ruined him.

"Dicky's all right - he can't know too much of that crook stuff," said the indolent Captain Martin, when his horrified relatives expostulated at the corruption of the motherless boy. "The boys like him - he's going into the police and the education's worth a million!"

Straight of body, clear - eyed, immensely sane, Dick Martin came happily through a unique period of test to the office. The war brought him to England, a stripling with a record of good work behind him. Scotland Yard claimed him, and he had the distinction of being the only member of the Criminal Investigation Department who had been appointed without going through a probationary period of patrol work.

As he went down the stone stairs, he was overtaken by the third commissioner.

"Hello, Martin! You're leaving us tomorrow? Bad luck! It is a thousand pities you have money. We're losing a good man. What are you going to do?"

Dick smiled ruefully.

"I don't know - I'm beginning to think I've made a mistake in leaving at all."

The 'old man' nodded.

"Do anything except lecture," he said, "and, for the Lord's sake, don't start a private agency! In America detective agencies do wonderful things - in England their work is restricted to thinking up evidence for divorces. A man asked me only today if I could recommend - -"

He stopped suddenly at the foot of the stairs and viewed Dick with a new interest.

"By, Jove! I wonder - -! Do you know Havelock, the lawyer?"

Dick shook his head.

"He's a pretty good man. His office is somewhere in Lincoln's Inn Fields. You'll find its exact position in the telephone directory. I met him at lunch and he asked me - -"

He paused, examining the younger man with a speculative eye.

"You're the very man - it is curious I did not think of you. He asked me if I could find him a reliable private detective, and I told him that such things did not exist outside the pages of fiction."

"It doesn't exist as far as I'm concerned," smiled Dick. "The last thing in the world I want to do is start a detective agency."

"And you're right, my boy," said the commissioner. "I could never respect you if you did. As a matter of fact, you're the very man for the job," he went on, a little inconsistently. "Will you go along and see Havelock, and tell him I sent you? I'd like you to help him if you could. Although he isn't a friend of mine, I know him and he's a very pleasant fellow."

"What is the job?" asked the young man, by no means enthralled at the prospect.

"I don't know," was the reply. "It may be one that you couldn't undertake. But I'd like you to see him - I half promised him that I would recommend somebody. I have an idea that it is in connection with a client of his who is giving him a little trouble. You would greatly oblige me, Martin, if you saw this gentleman."

The last thing in the world Dick Martin had in mind was the transference of his detective activities from Scotland Yard to the sphere of private agencies; but he had been something of a protege of the third commissioner, and there was no reason in the world why he should not see the lawyer. He said as much.

"Good," said the commissioner. "I'll phone him this afternoon and tell him you'll come along and see him. You may be able to help him."

"I hope so, sir," said Dick mendaciously.

Chapter 2

 

HE PURSUED his leisurely way to the Bellingham Library, one of the institutions of London that is known only to a select few. No novel or volume of sparkling reminiscence has a place upon the shelves of this institution, founded a hundred years ago to provide scientists and litterateurs with an opportunity of consulting volumes which were unprocurable save at the British Museum. On the four floors which constituted the building, fat volumes of German philosophy, learned and, to the layman, unintelligible books on scientific phenomena, obscure treatises on almost every kind of uninteresting subject, stood shoulder to shoulder upon their sedate shelves.

John Bellingham, who in the eighteenth century had founded this exchange of learning, had provided in the trust deeds that 'two intelligent females, preferably in indigent circumstances', should form part of the staff, and it was to one of these that Dick was conducted.

In a small, high - ceilinged room, redolent of old leather, a girl sat at a table, engaged in filing index cards.

"I am from Scotland Yard," Dick introduced himself. "I understand that some of your books have been stolen?"

He was looking at the packed shelves as he spoke, for he was not interested in females, intelligent or stupid, indigent or wealthy. The only thing he noticed about her was that she wore black and that her hair was a golden - brown and was brushed into a fringe over her forehead. In a vague way he supposed that most girls had hair of golden - brown, and be had a dim idea that fringes were popular among working - class ladies.

"Yes," she said quietly, "a book was stolen from this room whilst I was at luncheon. It was not very valuable - a German volume written by Haeckel called 'Generelle Morphologic'."

She opened a drawer and took out an index card and laid it before him, and he read the words without bong greatly enlightened.

"Who was here in your absence?" he asked.

"My assistant, a girl named Helder."

"Did any of your subscribers come into this room during that time?"

"Several," she replied. "I have their names, but most of them are above suspicion. The only visitor we had who is not a subscriber of the library was a gentleman named Stalleti, an Italian doctor, who called to make inquiries as to subscription."

"He gave his name?" asked Dick.

"No," said the girl to his surprise; "but Miss Helder recognized him; she had seen his portrait somewhere. I should have thought you would have remembered his name."

"Why on earth should I remember his name, my good girl?" asked Dick a little irritably.

"Why on earth shouldn't you, my good man?" she demanded coolly, and at that moment Dick Martin was aware of her, in the sense that she emerged from the background against which his life moved and became a personality.

Her eyes were grey and set wide apart; her nose straight and small; the mouth was a little wide - and she certainly had golden - brown hair.

"I beg your pardon!" he laughed. "As a matter of fact" - he had a trick of confidence which could be very deceptive - "I'm not at all interested in this infernal robbery. I'm leaving the police force tomorrow."

"There will be great joy amongst the criminal classes," she said politely, and when he saw the light of laughter in her eyes, his heart went out to her.

"You have a sense of humour," he smiled.

"You mean by that, that I've a sense of your humour," she answered quickly. "I have, or I should very much object to being called 'my good girl' even by an officer of the law" - "he looked at his card again - "even with the rank of sub - inspector."

There was a chair at his hand. Dick drew it out and sat down unbidden.

"I abase myself for my rudeness, and humbly beg information on the subject of Signor Stalleti. The names means no more to me than John Smith - the favourite pseudonym of all gentlemen caught in the act of breaking through the pantry window in the middle of the night."

For a second she surveyed him gravely, her red lips pursed. "And you're a detective?" she said, in a hushed voice. "One of those almost human beings who protect us while we sleep!"

He was helpless with laughter.

"I surrender!" He put up his hands. "And now, having put me in my place, which I admit is a pretty lowly one, perhaps you will pass across a little information about the purloined literature."

"I've no information to pass across." She leaned back in her chair, looking at him interestedly. "The book was here at two o'clock; it was not here at half past two - there may be fingerprints on the shelf, but I doubt it, because we keep three charladies for the sole purpose of cleaning up fingerprints."

"But who is Stalleti?"

She nodded slowly. "That was why I expressed a little wonder about your being a detective," she said. "My assistant tells me that he is known to the police. Would you like to see his book?"

"Has he written a book?" he asked in genuine surprise. She got up, went out of the room and returned with a thin volume, plainly bound. He took the volume in his hand and read the title.

"New Thoughts on Constructive Biology, by Antonio Stalletti." Turning the closely printed leaves, broken almost at every page by diagrams and statistical tables, he asked: "Why did he get into trouble with the police? I didn't know that it was a criminal offence to write a book."

"It is," she emphatically; "but not invariably punished as such. I understand that the law took no exception to Mr Stalletti being an author; and that his offence was in connection with vivisection or something equally horrid."

"What is all this about?" He handed the book back to her.

"It is about human beings," she said solemnly, "like you and me; and how much better and happier they would be if, instead of being mollycoddled - I think that is the scientific term - they were allowed to run wild in a wood and fed on a generous diet of nuts."

"Oh, vegetarian stuff!" said Slick contemptuously.

"Not exactly vegetarian. But perhaps you would like to become a subscriber and read it for yourself?" And then she dropped her tone of banter. "The truth is, Mr - er - " she looked at his card again - "Martin, we are really not worried about the loss of this book of Haeckel's. It is already replaced, and if the secretary hadn't been such a goop he wouldn't have reported the matter to the police. And I beg of you" - she raised a warning finger - "if you meet our secretary that you will not repeat my opinion of him. Now please tell me something that will make my flesh creep. I've never met a detective before, I may never meet one again."

Dick put down the book and rose to his seventy - two inches. "Madam," he said, "I have not mustered courage to ask your name, I deserve all the roasting you have given me, but as you are strong, be merciful. Where does Stalleti live?"

She picked up the book and turned back the cover to a preface.

"Gallows Cottage. That sounds a little creepy doesn't it? It is in Sussex."

"I can read that for myself," he said, nettled, and she became instantly penitent.

"You see, we aren't used to these exciting interludes, and a police visitation gets into one's head. I really don't think the book's worth bothering about, but I suppose my word doesn't go very far."

"Was anybody here besides Stalleti?" She showed him a list of four names. "Except Mr Stalletti, I don't think anybody is under suspicion. As a matter of fact, the other three people were severely historical, and biology wouldn't interest them in the slightest degree. It could not have happened if I had been here, because I'm naturally rather observant."

She stopped suddenly and looked at the desk. The book that had been lying there a few seconds before had disappeared. "Did you take it?" she asked.

"Did you see me take it?" he challenged.

"I certainly didn't. I could have sworn it was there a second ago.

He took it from under his coat and handed it to her. "I like observant people," he said.

"But how did you do it?" She was mystified. "I had my hand on the book and I only took my eyes off for a second."

"One of these days I'll come along and teach you," he said with portentous gravity, and was in the street before he remembered that clever as he was, he had not succeeded in learning the name of this very capable young lady.

Sybil Lansdown walked to the window which commanded a view of the square and watched him till he was out of sight, a half smile on her lips and the light of triumph in her eyes. Her first inclination was to dislike him intensely; she hated self - satisfied men. And yet he wasn't exactly that. She wondered if she would ever meet him again - there were so few amusing people in the world, and she felt that - she took up the card - Sub - Inspector Richard Martin might be very amusing indeed.

Chapter 3

 

DICK WAS piqued to the extent of wishing to renew the encounter, and there was only one excuse for that. He went to the garage near his flat, took out his dingy Buick and drove down to Gallows Hill. It was not an easy quest, because Gallows Hill is not marked on the map and only had a local significance; and it was not until he was on the edge of Selford Manor that he learnt from a road - mender that the cottage was on the main road and that he had come about ten miles out of his way.

It was late in the afternoon when he drew abreast of the broken wall and hanging gate behind which was the habitation of Dr Stalletti. The weed - grown drive turned abruptly to reveal a mean - looking house, which he thought was glorified by the name of cottage. So many of his friends had 'cottages' which were mansions, and 'little places' which were very little indeed, when he had expected to find a more lordly dwelling.

There was no bell, and he knocked at the weather - stained door for five minutes before he had an answer. And then he heard a shuffling of feet on bare boards, the clang of a chain being removed, and the door opened a few inches.

Accustomed as he was to unusual spectacles, he gaped at the man who was revealed in the space between door and lintel. A long, yellow face, deeply lined and criss - crossed with innumerable lines till it looked like an ancient yellow apple; a black beard that half - covered its owner's waistcoat; a skull - cap; a pair of black, malignant eyes blinking at these were his first impressions. "Dr Stalletti?" he asked.

"That is my name." The voice was harsh, with just a suggestion of a foreign accent. "Did you wish to speak with me? Yes? That is extraordinary. I do not receive visitors."

He seemed in some hesitation as to what he should do, and then he turned his head and spoke to somebody over his shoulder, and in doing so revealed to the detective a young, rosy, and round - faced man, very newly and smartly dressed. At the sight of Dick the man stepped back quickly out of sight.

"Good - morning, Thomas," said Dick Martin politely. "This is an unexpected pleasure." The bearded man growled something and opened the door wide.

Tommy Cawler was indeed a sight for sore eyes. Dick Martin had seen him in many circumstances, but never so beautifully and perfectly arrayed. His linen was speckless; his clothes were the product of a West End tailor.

"Good - morning, Mr Martin." Tommy was in no sense abashed, "I just happened to call round to see my old friend Stalletti."

Dick gazed at him admiringly. "You simply ooze prosperity! What is the game now, Tommy?"

Tommy closed his eyes, a picture of patience and resignation.

"I've got a good job now, Mr Martin - straight as a die! No more trouble for me, thank you. Well, I'll be saying goodbye, doctor."

He shook hands a little too vigorously with the bearded man and stepped past him and down the steps.

"Wait a moment, Tommy. I'd like to have a few words with you. Can you spare me a moment whilst I see Dr Stalletti?"

The man hesitated, shot a furtive glance at the bearded figure in the doorway.

"All right," he said ungraciously. "But don't be long, I've got an engagement. Thank you for the medicine, doctor," he added loudly.

Dick was not deceived by so transparent a bluff. He followed the doctor into the hall. Farther the strange man did not invite him.

"You are police, yes?" he said, when Dick produced his card. "How extraordinary and bizarre! To me the police have not come for a long time - such trouble for a man because he experiments for science on a leetle dog! Such a fuss and nonsense! Now you ask me - what?"

In a few words Dick explained his errand, and to his amazement the strange man answered immediately:

"Yes, the book, I have it! It was on the shelf. I needed it, so I took it!"

"But, my good man," said the staggered detective, "you're not allowed to walk off with other people's property because you want it!"

"It is a library. It is for lending, is it not? I desired to borrow, so I took it with me. There was no concealment. I placed it under my arm, I lifted my hat to the young signora, and that was all. Now I have finished with it and it may go back. Haeckel is a fool; his conclusions are absurd, his theories extraordinary and bizarre." (Evidently this was a favourite phrase of his.) "To you they would seem very dull and commonplace, but to me - - " He shrugged his shoulders and uttered a little cackle of sound which Dick gathered was intended to be laughter.

The detective delivered a little lecture on the systems of loaning libraries, and with the book under his arm went out to rejoin the waiting Mr Cawler. He had at least an excuse for returning to the library, he thought with satisfaction.

"Now, Cawler" - he began without superfluous preliminaries and his voice was peremptory - "I want to know something about you. Is Stalletti a friend of yours?"

"He's my doctor," said the man coolly.

He had a merry blue eye, and he was one of the few people who had passed through his hands for whom Dick had a genuine liking. Tommy Cawler had been a notorious 'knocker - off* of motor - cars, and a 'knocker - off' is one who, finding an unattended machine, steps blithely into the driver's seat and is gone before the owner misses his machine. Tommy's two convictions had both been due to the unremitting inquiries of the man who now questioned him.

"I've got a regular job; I'm chauffeur to Mr Bertram Cody," said Tom virtuously. "I'm that honest now, I wouldn't touch anything crook, not to save my life."

"Where does Mr Cody live when he's at home?" asked Dick, unconvinced.

"Weald House. It is only a mile from here; you can step over and ask if you like."

"Does he know about your - sad past?" Dick questioned delicately.

"He does; I told him everything. He says I am the best chauffeur he ever had."

Dick examined the man carefully.

"Is this er - er - uniform that your employer prefers?"

"I'm going on holiday, to tell you the truth," said Mr Cawler. "The governor is pretty good about holidays. Here's the address if you want it."

He took an envelope from his pocket addressed to himself 'c/o Bertram Cody, Esq., Weald House, South Weald, Sussex.'

"They treat me like a lord," he said, not without truth. "And a more perfect lady and gentleman than Mr and Mrs Cody you'd never hope to see."

"Fine," said the sceptical Richard. "Forgive these embarrassing questions. Tommy, but in my bright lexicon there is no such word as 'reform'."

"I don't know your friend, but you've got it wrong," said Tommy hazily.

Martin offered him a lift, but this was declined, and the detective went back alone to London, and, to his annoyance, arrived at the library half an hour after the girl had left.

It was too late, he thought, to see Mr Havelock of Lincoln's Inn Fields, and in point of fact the recollection of that engagement brought with it a feeling of discomfort. His plans were already made. He intended spending a month in Germany before he returned to the work which he had promised himself: a volume on 'Thieves and Their Methods', which he thought would pleasantly occupy the next year.

Dick, without being extremely wealthy, was in a very comfortable position. Sneed had spoken of a six - figure legacy, and was nearly right, although the figures were dollars, for his uncle had been a successful cattle fanner of Alberta. Mainly he was leaving the police force because he was nearing promotion, and felt it unfair to stand in the way of other men who were more in need of rank than himself. Police work amused him. It was his hobby and occupation, and he did not care to contemplate what life would be without that interest.

He had turned to go into his flat when he heard a voice hail him, and he turned to see the man whom he had released that morning crossing the road in some haste. Ordinarily, Lew Pheeney was the coolest of men, but now he was almost incoherent.

"Can I see you, Slick?" he asked, a quiver in his voice, which Dick did not remember having heard before.

"Surely you can see me. Why? Is anything wrong?"

"I don't know." The man looked up and down the street nervously. "I'm being trailed."

"Not by the police - that I can swear," said Dick.

"Police!" said the man impatiently. "Do you think that would worry me? No, it's the fellow - I spoke to you about, There's something wrong in that business. Slick, I kept one thing from you. While I was working I saw this guy slip a gun out of his hip and drop it into his overcoat pocket. He stood holding it all the time I was working, and it struck me then that, if I'd got that door open, there'd have been no chance of my ever touching the thousand. Half way through I said I wanted to go out, and, once outside, I bolted. There was something that chased me - God knows what it was; a sort of animal. And I hadn't got a gun - I never carry one in this country, because a judge piles it on if you're caught with a barker in your pocket."

All the time they had been speaking they were passing through the vestibule and up the stairs to Slick's flat, and, without invitation, the burglar followed him into the apartment.

He led the man into his study and shut the door. "Now, Lew, let me hear the truth - what was the work you were doing on Tuesday night?"

Lew looked round the room, out of the window, everywhere except at Dick. Then: "I was trying to open a dead man's tomb!" he said in a low voice.

Chapter 4

 

THERE WAS a silence of a minute. Dick looked at the man, hardly believing his ears.

"Trying to open a dead man's tomb?" he repeated. "Now sit down and tell me all about it, Lew."

"I can't - yet. I'm scared," said the other doggedly. "This man is hell, and I'd as soon face the devil as go through another night like I had on Tuesday."

"Who is the man?"

"I won't tell you that," said the other sullenly. "I might at the end, but I won't tell you now. If I can find a quiet place I'm going to write it all out, and have it on paper in case - anything happens to me."

He was obviously labouring under a sense of unusual excitement, and Dick, who had known him for many years, both in England and in Canada, was amazed to see this usually phlegmatic man in such a condition of nerves.

He refused to take the dinner that the old housekeeper served, contenting himself with a whisky and soda, and Dick Martin thought it wise not to attempt to question him any further.

"Why don't you stay here tonight and write your story? I won't ask you for it, but you'll be as safe here as anywhere."

That idea seemed already to have occurred to the man, for he obeyed instantly, and Dick gathered that he had such scheme in his mind. Diner was nearly through when the detective was called away to the phone. "Is that Mr Martin?" The voice was that of a stranger. "Yes," replied Dick.

"I am Mr Havelock. The Commissioner sent me a message this evening, and I was expecting you to call at my office. I wonder if you could see me tonight?" There was anxiety and urgency in the tone.

"Why, surely," said Dick. "Where are you living?"

"907, Acada Road, St John's Wood. I am very near to you; a taxi would get you here in five minutes. Have you dined? I was afraid you had. Will you come up to coffee in about a quarter of an hour?"

Dick Martin had agreed before he realized that his guest and his strange story had to be considered.

The startling announcement of Lew Pheeney had changed his plans. Yet it might be advisable to leave the man to write his story. He called his housekeeper aside and dismissed her for the night. Pheeney, alone in the flat, might write his story without interruption.

The man readily agreed to his suggestion, seemed, in fact, relieved at the prospect of being alone, and a quarter of an hour later Mr Martin was ringing the bell of an imposing house that stood in its acre of garden in the best part of St Johns Wood. An elderly butler took his suck and hat and conducted him into a long dining - room, furnished with quiet taste. Evidently Mr Havelock was something of a connoisseur, for of the four pictures that hung on the wall, Dick accurately placed one as being by Corot, and the big portrait over the carved mantelpiece was undoubtedly a Rembrandt.

The lawyer was dining in solitary state at the end of a long, polished table. A glass of red wine stood at his elbow, a long, thin cigar was between his teeth. He was a man between fifty and sixty, tall and rather thin. He had the brow and jaw of a fighter, and his iron - grey side - whiskers gave him a certain ferocious appearance. Dick liked him, for the eyes behind his horn - rimmed spectacles were very attractive.

"Mr Martin, eh?" He half rose and offered his firm, thin hand. "Sit down. What will you drink? I have a port here that was laid down for princes. Walters, give Mr Martin a glass."

He leaned back in his chair, his lips pursed, and regarded die young man fixedly.

"So you're a detective, eh?" It sounded reminiscent of an experience he had had that morning, and Dick grinned. "The commissioner says you're leaving the police force tomorrow, and that you want a hobby. By heavens, I'll furnish you a hobby that'll save me a lot of sleepless nights! Walters, serve Mr Martin and clear out. And I am not to be interrupted. Switch off the phone; I'm not at home to anybody, however important." When the door had closed behind the butler, Mr Havelock rose and began a restless pacing of the room. He had a quick, abrupt, almost offensively brusque manner, jerking out his sentences accusatively. "I'm a lawyer - you probably know my name, though I've never been in a police court in my life. I'm very seldom in any court of law. I deal with companies and estates, and I'm trustee for half a dozen, or maybe a dozen, various charities. I'm the trustee of the Selford estate." He said this with a certain emphasis, as though he thought that Dick would understand the peculiar significance of this. "I'm the trustee of the Selford estate," he said again, "and I wish to heaven I wasn't. Old - Lord Selford - not that he was old, except in sin and iniquity, but the late Lord Selford, let me say - left me the sole executor of his property and guardian of his wretched child. The late Lord Selford was a very unpleasant, bad - tempered man, half mad, as most of the Selfords have been for generations. Do you know Selford Manor?"

Dick smiled. "Curiously enough, I was on the edge of it today. I didn't know there was such a place until this afternoon, and I had no such idea there was a Lord Selford - does he live there?"

"He doesn't." Havelock snapped the words, his eyes gleaming fiercely from behind his glasses. "I wish to God he did. He lives nowhere. That is to say, he lives nowhere longer than two or three days together. He is a nomad of nomads; his father in his youth was something of the same nature. Pierce - that is his family name, by the way, and he has always been called Pierce - has spent the last ten years wandering from town to town, from country to country, drawing heavily upon his revenue, as he can well afford to do because it is a large one, and returning to England only at the rarest intervals. I haven't seen him for four years." He said this slowly.

"I'll give you his history, Mr Martin, so that you will understand it better," he went on. "When Selford died, Pierce was six. He had no mother, and, curiously enough, no near relations. Selford was an only child, and his wife was also in that position, so that there were no uncles and aunts to whom I could have handed over my responsibility. The boy was delicate, as I found when I sent him to a preparatory school at the age of eight, expecting to be rid of the poor little beggar, but not a day passed that he didn't send me a note asking to be taken away. Eventually I found a private tutor for him, and he got some sort of education. It was not good enough to enable him to pass the Little Go - that is the entrance examination to Cambridge - and I sent him abroad with his tutor to travel. I wish to heaven I hadn't! For the travel bug bit deep into his soul, and he's been moving ever since. Four years ago he came to me in London. He was then on his way to America, where he was studying economic conditions. He had a wild idea of writing a book - one of the delusions from which most people suffer is that other people are interested in their recollections."

Dick flushed guiltily, but the lawyer went on, without apparently noticing his embarrassment.

"Now I'm worried about this boy. From time to time demands come through to me for money, and from time to time I cable him very respectable sums - which, of course, he is entitled to receive, for he is now twenty - four."

"His financial position - - " began Dick. "Perfectly sound, perfectly sound," said Mr Havelock impressively. "That isn't the question at all. What is worrying me is, the boy being so long out of my sight. Anything may happen to him; he may have fallen into the worst possible hands." He hesitated, and added: "And I feel that I should get in touch with him - not directly, but through a third person. In other words, I want you to go to America next week, and, without saying that you came from me, or that I sent you, get acquainted with Lord Selford - he travels, by the way, as Mr John Pierce. He is a very quick mover, and you'll have to make careful inquiries as to where he has gone, because I cannot promise that I can keep you as well informed of his movements as I should like. If, in your absence, I have a cable from him, I will, of course, transmit it to you. I want you to find Pierce, but in no circumstances are you to acquaint the police of America that you are following him, or that there is anything suspicious in his movements. All that I want to know is. Has he contracted any undesirable alliance, is he a free agent, is the money I send to him being employed for his own benefit? He tells me, by the way, that he has bought a number of shares in industrial concerns in various parts of the world, and some of these shares are in my possession. A great number, however, I cannot account for, and he has replied to my inquiries by telling me that they are safely deposited with a South African banking corporation. The reason I ask you to keep this matter entirely to yourself is because, you will understand, I can't have him embarrassed by the attentions of the local authorities. And most earnestly I am desirous that he should not know I sent you. Now, Mr Martin, how does the idea appeal to you?"

Dick smiled. "It looks to me like a very pleasant sort of holiday. How long will this chase last?"

"I don't know - a few months, a few weeks: it all depends upon the report I receive from you, which, by the way, must be cabled to me direct. I have a very free hand and I can allow you the limit of expenses; in addition to which I will pay you a handsome fee." He named a sum which was surprisingly munificent.

"When would you want me to go?" The lawyer took out a little pocketbook and evidently consulted a calendar.

"Today is Wednesday; suppose you leave next Wednesday by the Cunarder? At present he is in Boston, but he tells me that he is going to New York, where he will be staying at the Commodore. Boston is a favourite hunting ground of his." His lips twitched. "I believe he intends sparing a chapter to the American War of Independence," he said dryly; "and, naturally, Boston will afford him an excellent centre for that study."

"One question," said Dick, as he rose to go. "Have you any reason to suppose that he has contracted, as you say, an undesirable alliance - in other words, has married somebody that he shouldn't have married?"

"No reason at all, except my suspicious mind," smiled Mr Havelock. "If you become friendly with him, as I am perfectly sure with an effort you can succeed in doing, there are certain things I would like you to urge upon him. The first of these is that he come back to England and takes his seat in the House of Peers. That is very essential. Then I should like him to have a London season, because it's high time he was married and off my mind. Selford Manor is going to ruin for want of an occupant. It is disgraceful that a fine old house like that should be left to the charge of a caretaker - anyway, he ought to come back to be buried there," he added, with a certain grim humour, and Dick did not quite understand the point of his remark until eight months later.

The task was, in Dr Stalletti's words, extraordinary and bizarre, but it was not wholly unusual. Indeed, the first thought he had was its extreme simplicity. The commission was really a holiday on a grand scale, and something of his regret at leaving Scotland Yard was expunged by the pleasant prospect.

It was nine o'clock on this wet October night when he came into Acacia Road. There was not a cab in sight, and he had to walk half a mile before he reached a rank. Letting himself into his flat, he found it in darkness, and to his surprise Pheeney had gone. The remains of the dinner were on the table - he had told the housekeeper that he would clear the board, but one corner of the tablecloth had been turned up, and there on the cleared space half a dozen sheets of paper and a fountain pen. Evidently Lew intended returning, but though Dick Martin waited up until two o'clock, there was no sign of the grave - robber. For some reason Pheeney had changed his mind.

At half past ten the next morning he called at the library with his book. The girl looked up with a little laugh as he came in.

"I admit I'm a good joke," he said ruefully. "Here is your book. It was taken by an ignorant foreigner, who believed that loaning libraries are run on rather haphazard lines."

She stared at the book. "Really, you are most impressive, Mr Martin. Please tell me how you did it."

"Sheer deduction," he said gaily. "I knew the man who took it was a foreigner, because you told me so. I guessed his address because you gave it me; and I recovered the book by the intricate process of asking for it!"

"Wonderful!" she breathed, and they laughed together. There was small excuse for his lingering, yet he contrived, as she hinted rather plainly, to hinder her for the greater part of an hour. Happily, the patrons of the Bellingham Library were not early risers, and she had the best part of the morning to herself.

"I am going abroad next week for a few months," he said carelessly. "I don't know why I tell you, but I thought possibly you would be interested in foreign travel."

She smiled to herself.

"You are certainly the naivest detective I have ever met! In fact, the only detective I have ever met!" she added. Then, seeing his obvious discomfiture, she became almost kind. "You see. Air. Martin, I have been very well brought up" - even in her kindness, her irony made him wince - "which means that I am fearfully conventional. I wonder if you can guess how many men one meets in the course of a week who try to interest you in their family affairs? I'm not being unkind really," she smiled, as he protested.

"I've been rather a brute - I'm awfully sorry," said Dick frankly, "and I deserve all the roasting you give me. But it's very natural that even a humble detective officer should wish to improve an acquaintance with one who, if I may say so without bringing a blush to your maiden cheeks, has a singularly attractive mind." >

"And now let us all be complimentary," she said, though the colour in her face was heightened and her eyes were a little brighter. "You are the world's best detective, and if ever I lose anything, I am sending immediately for you."

"Then you'll draw a blank," said Dick triumphantly. "I'm leaving the force and becoming a respectable member of society tomorrow. Miss - -?"

She did not attempt to help him.

Then suddenly he saw a look of understanding come to her face.

"You're not the man that Mr Havelock is sending to look for my relative, are you?"

"Your relative?" he asked in amazement. "Is Lord Selford a relative of yours?"

She nodded. "He's a forty - second cousin, heaven knows how many times removed. Father was his second cousin. Mother and I were dining with Mr Havelock the other night, and he said that he was trying to get a man to run Selford to earth."

"Have you ever met him?" asked Dick.

She shook her head.

"No, but my mother knew him when he was a small boy. I think she saw him once. His father was a horror. I suppose Mr Havelock has told you that - I am assuming that my guess is right: you are going in search of him?"

Dick nodded.

"That was the sad news I was trying to break to you," he said.

At that moment their tete - a - tete was interrupted by the arrival of an elderly gentleman with a vinegary voice, who, Dick guessed, was the secretary.

He went back to Scotland Yard to find Captain Sneed, who had been absent when he had called on the phone that morning. Sneed listened without comment to the extraordinary story of Lew Pheeney's midnight occupation.

"It certainly sounds like a lie, and anything that sounds like a lie generally is a lie," he said. "Why didn't Pheeney stay, if he'd got this thing on his conscience? And who was chasing him? Did you see anybody?"

"Nobody," said Dick. "But the man was afraid, and genuinely so."

"Humph!" said Sneed, and pressed a bell.

To the clerk who answered: "Send a man to pick up Pheeney and bring him here. I want to ask him a few questions," he said. And then, calling the man back: "You know his address, Dick. Go along and see if you can unearth him."

"My term of service expires at twelve today."

"Midnight," said Sneed laconically. "Get busy!"

Lew Pheeney lived in Great Queen Street, at a lodging he had occupied for years; but his landlady could give no information. Pheeney had left the previous afternoon somewhere about five and had not returned. A haunt of the burglar was a small club, extensively patronized by the queer class which hovers eternally on the rim of the law. Pheeney had not been there - he usually came in to breakfast and to collect his letters.

Dick saw a man who said he had had an engagement with Pheeney on the previous night, and that he had waited until twelve.

"Where am I likely to find him?"

Here, however, no information was forthcoming. Dick Martin's profession was as well known as Mr Pheeney's.

He reported the result of his visits to Sneed, who for some reason took a more serious view of the whole matter than Dick had expected.

"I'm believing it now, that grave - robbing story," said Sneed, "and certainly it's remarkable if Lew was upset, because nothing short of an earthquake would raise a squeal with him. Maybe he's at your flat?"

When Dick got home the flat was empty. His housekeeper had neither seen nor heard from the visitor. The detective strolled into his bedroom, pulled off his coat, intending to put on the old shooting jacket he wore when he was writing - for he had a number of reports to finish before he made his final exit from the Yard. The coat was not hanging up where it was usually kept, and he remembered that his housekeeper had told him that she had put it in the bureau: a tall piece of mahogany furniture where his four suits were invariably hung on hangers.

Without a thought he turned the handle of the bureau door and pulled it open. As he did so, the body of a man fell against him, almost knocking him over, and dropped to the floor with an inanimate thud. It was Lew Pheeney, and he was dead.

Chapter 5

 

THE Big Five at Scotland Yard filled Dick Martin's dining room, waiting for the verdict of the medical man who had been hastily summoned. The doctor came in in a few minutes. "So far as I can tell by a superficial examination," he said, "he's been dead for some hours, and was either strangled or his neck was broken."

In spite of his self - control, Dick shivered. He had slept in the room that night, where, behind the polished door, lay that ghastly secret. "There was no sign of a struggle, Martin?" asked one of the officers.

"None whatever," said Dick emphatically. "I am inclined to agree with the doctor: I should think that he was struck by something heavy and killed instantly. But how they got into the flat. God knows!"

Inquiries of the girl who worked the night elevator were unsatisfactory, because she could remember nobody having come into the flat after Dick had gone out.

The six detectives made a minute examination of the premises.

"There's only one way he could have come in," said Sneed when the inspection was over, "and that is through the kitchenette."

There was a door in the kitchen leading to a tiny balcony, by the side of which ran an outside service lift, used, as Dick explained, to convey tradesmen's parcels from the courtyard below, and worked from the ground level by a small handle and winch.

"You don't remember if this kitchen door was bolted?" asked Sneed.

The troubled young man explained that he had not been in the kitchen after his return on the previous night. But his housekeeper, who was hovering tearfully in the background, volunteered the information that the door was open when she had come that morning.

Dick looked down into the yard. The flat was sixty feet from the ground, and although it was possible that the intruder had climbed the ropes of the service lift, it seemed a feat beyond the power of most burglars.

"He gave you no indication as to who the man was he feared?" asked Sneed, when the rest of the Yard officers had gone back to headquarters.

"No," Dick shook his head. "He told me nothing. He was scared, and I'm sure his story was perfectly true - namely, that he was engaged to rob a grave, and that he had an idea that the man who made the engagement would have killed him if he had succeeded in his task."

Dick went down to Lincoln's Inn Fields that morning and had an interview with Mr Havelock, who had already read the account in the evening newspapers, though Lew's strange story was suppressed by the police even at the inquest.

"Yes, I was afraid this might interfere with our plans, but I'm not particular to a week or two, and if you must remain behind for inquiries, I will still further extend the period. Though in a sense the matter is urgent, it is not immediately so."

There was a conference of Yard officials, and it was agreed that Dick should be allowed to leave England immediately after the inquest, unless an arrest was made, on the understanding that he was to keep in touch with headquarters, so that, should the murderer be found, it would be possible for him to return to give evidence at the trial. This arrangement he conveyed to Mr Havelock.

The inquest was held on the Friday, and, after Dick's evidence, adjourned for an indefinite period. On the Saturday morning at twelve o'clock he left England, on the wildest chase that any man had ever undertaken. And behind him, did he but know it, stalked the shadow of death.

Chapter 6

 

WHEN DICK Martin left England on his curious quest, the Pheeney murder bulked largely in the newspapers, and almost as largely in his mind. There were other thoughts and other fancies to occupy the voyage, and, long after the memory of the murdered cracksman had faded, there remained with him the vision of two grey eyes that were laughing at him all the time, and the sound of a low, sweet, teasing voice.

If he had only had the sense to discover her name before he left. He might have written to her, or, or least, sent her picture postcards of the strange lands through which he travelled. But, in the hurry of his departure, and occupied as he was with the Pheeney crime, though he played no official part in the inevitable inquiries which followed, he had neither the time nor the excuse to call upon her. A letter addressed to 'the pretty lady with the grey eyes at the Bellingham Library' might conceivably reach her, if there were no other lady employed in the building who also was favoured with eyes of that hue. On the other hand (he argued this quite gravely, as though it were an intelligent proposition) she might conceivably be annoyed.

From Chicago he sent a letter to the secretary of the library, enclosing a subscription, though he had no more need of scientific volumes than a menagerie of wild cats. But he hoped that he would see her name on the receipt - it was not until the letter was posted that he realized that by the time the receipt returned to Chicago he would be thousands of miles away, and cursed himself for his folly.

Naturally he heard nothing from Sneed, and was compelled to depend upon such stray English papers as came his way to discover how the Pheeney mystery had developed. Apparently the police had made no arrest, and the record of the crime had dwindled to small paragraphs in odd comers of the newspapers.

He came to Cape Town from Buenos Aires, to miss his man by a matter of days, and there had the first cheerful news he had received since his search began. It was a cable from Havelock asking him to return home at once, and with a joyful heart he boarded the Castle boat at the quay. On that day he made his second important discovery, the first having been made in Buenos Aires.

In all his travels he had not once come up with the will - o' - the - wisp lordling whom he had followed half round the world, and the zest of the chase had already departed from him. From Cape Town to Madeira was a thirteen - day voyage by the intermittent steamer on which he travelled, having missed the mail by four days. To a man with other interests than deck sports, the peculiar characteristics of passengers, and the daily sweepstake, those thirteen days represented - the dullest period Dick Martin had ever endured. And then, when the ship stopped to coal, the miracle happened. Just before the steamer left, a launch came alongside; half a dozen passengers mounted the stairs, and for a moment Dick thought he was dreaming.

It was she! There was no mistaking her. He could have picked her out of a million. She did not see him, nor did he make himself known to her. For now that they were, so to speak, under one roof, and the opportunity that he dreamed of had presented itself in such an unexpected fashion, he was curiously shy, and avoided her until almost the last day of the voyage.

She was coolness itself when at last they met. "Ah yes, I knew you were on board. I saw your name in the passenger list," she said, and he was so agitated that he did not even resent the amusement in her eyes.

"Why didn't you speak to me?" he asked brazenly, and again she smiled.

"I thought you were here - on business," she said maliciously. "My steward told me that you spent most of your evenings in the smokeroom watching people play cards. I was wondering when you were coming into the library. You're a subscriber now, aren't you?"

"Yes," he said awkwardly; "I believe I am."

"I know because I signed your receipt," she said. "Oh, then, you're - - "He paused expectantly. "I'm the person that signed the receipt." Not a muscle of her face moved. And then: "What is your name?" he asked bluntly.

"My name is Lansdown - Sybil Lansdown."

"Of course, I remember!"

"You saw it on the receipt, of course?" He nodded.

"It was returned to the library through the Dead Letter Office!" she went on ruthlessly.

"I never knew a human being who could make a man feel quite as big a fool as you," he protested, laughing. "I mean, as you make me fed," he corrected hastily.

And that ended the conversation until the evening. On the dark deck, side by side, they talked commonplaces, until - -

"Start Light on the port bow, sir," said a muffled voice on the bridge deck above.

The two people leaning over the rail in the narrow deck space forward saw a splash of light quiver for the fraction of a second on the rim of the dark sea and vanish again. "That is a lighthouse, isn't is?"

Dick edged himself a little closer to the girl, sliding himself stealthily along the broad rail.

"Start Light," he explained. "I don't know why they call it 'Start' - 'Finish' would be a better word, I guess." A silence, then:

"You are not American, are you?"

"Canadian by habit, British by birth - mostly anything people want me to be. A kind of renegade." He laughed softly in the darkness.

"I don t think that is a nice word. I wondered if I should meet you when I came aboard at Madeira. There are an awful queer lot of people on board this ship."

"Thank you for those kind words," said Dick gravely, and she protested. He went on: "There never was an ocean - going ship that wasn't full of queer people. I'll give you a hundred million if you can travel on a packet where some passenger doesn't say, 'My, what a menagerie!' about the others. No, Miss Lansdown, you're not being trite. Life's trite anyway. The tritest thing you can do is to eat and sleep. Try living originally and see how quick you go dead. Here's another queer thing about ships - you never have the nerve to talk to the people you like till you're only a day from port. What they do with themselves the rest of the time, I've never found out. Five days from Madeira - and I never spoke to you till this afternoon. That's proof."

She drew a little farther from him and straightened herself.

"I think I'll go below now," she said. "It is rather late and we have to get up early - -"

"What you're really thinking," said Dick, very gently, "is that in a second or so I'll be pawing your hand and saying wouldn't it be wonderful if we could sail on like this for ever under the stars and everything. I'm not. Beauty attracts me, I admit it. I know you're beautiful because I couldn't find anything odd about your face." He heard her laughing. "That's beauty in a sentence - something that isn't odd. If your nose was fat and your eyes little and squeeny and your complexion like one of these maps that show the density of population, I'd have admired you for your goodness of heart, but I shouldn't have raved you into the Cleopatra class. I'll bet she wasn't much to look at if the truth was known."

"Are you going abroad again?" She turned the talk into a way that was less embarrassing, but regretted the necessity.

"No - I'm staying in London: in Claygate Gardens. I've got a pretty nice little flat; you can sit in the middle of any room and touch the walls without stretching. But it's big enough for a man without ambitions. When you get to my age - I'll be thirty on the fourteenth of September: you might like to send me flowers - you're content to settle down and watch the old world wag around. I'll be glad to get back. London takes a hold of you, and just when you're getting tired of it, up comes a fog like glue - gas and you can't find your way out."

She sighed.

"Our flat is smaller than yours. Madeira was heaven after Coram Street!"

"What number?" asked Dick brazenly.

"One of the many," she smiled. "And now I really must go. Goodnight."

He did not walk back with her to the companionway, but strolled to the ship's side, where he could watch the slim figure as it passed quickly along the deserted deck.

He wondered what had taken her to Madeira, for he guessed that she was not one of those fortunate people who, to escape the rigours of an English winter, could afford to follow the path of the vernal equinox. She was much more pretty than he had thought - - beautiful in a pale, Oriental way - it was the slant of her grey eyes that suggested the East - not pale exactly - and yet not pink. Perhaps it was the geranium red of her lips that, by contrast, gave the illusion of pallor. Thin? He decided that she was not that. He thought of thin people in terms of brittleness - and she was supple and plastic.

Amazed to find himself analyzing her charm, he strolled along the deck and turned into the smoking - room. Although the hour was past eleven, the tables were occupied, and by the usual crowd. He walked to one in the corner and stood watching the play until, after many uneasy and resentful glances, the big man who, up till his arrival, had been the most jovial and the most successful player threw down his cards.

"Goin' to bed," he growled, gathered up his winnings and rose.

He stopped before Slick.

"You won a hundred from me last week," he said. "You pay that back before you leave this ship."

"Will you have it in notes or money?" asked Dick Martin politely. "Or maybe you'd prefer a cheque?"

The big man said nothing for a moment, then: "Come outside," he said.

Dick followed him to the dim lights of the promenade deck.

"See here, mister. I've been waitin' a chance to talk to you - I don't know you, though your face is kind of familiar. I've been working this line for ten years and I'll stand for a little competition, but not much. What I won't stand for is a cheap skate like you takin' me on and stunnin' me for a century with a stacked deck of cards. Get me?"

"In fact, what your soul kind of pines for is honour amongst card - sharps," said Dick. "Ever seen this?"

He took a metal badge from his pocket, and the big man gurgled apprehensively.

"I'm not entitled to wear that now, because I've left the Royal Canadian Police," said Dick Martin, replacing the badge. "I carry it around for old times' sake. You remember me? I'd say you did! I pinched you in Montreal eight winters ago for selling mining stock that was unattached to any mine."

"Dick Martin - - " The big man invoked a great personage.

In the seclusion of his cabin, which he shared with two of his confederates, the big fellow wiped the perspiration from his forehead and grew biographical.

"He's the feller that went up to the Klondyke and took Harvey Wells. He had a moustache then, that's why I didn't recognize him. That feller's mustard! His father was governor of the gaol at Fort Stuart and used to allow his kid to play around with the boys. They say he can do anything with a pack of cards except make it sing. He caught Joe Haldy by pickin' his pocket for the evidence, and Joe's as wide as Bond Street."

Next morning, Mr Martin came down the gangway plank of the Grail Castle carrying a suitcase in each hand. One of the Flack gang that attends all debarkations to look over likely suckers, marked his youth and jauntiness and hooked his friend, the steward, who was usually a mine of information.

"Mr Richard Martin; he's a reg'lar time chaser - came to the Cape from the Argentine; got to the Argentine from Peru an' China - been down to New Zealand and India - God knows where?"

"Got any stuff?"

The steward was dubious.

"Must have - no, he's not a drummer - he had the best cabin on the ship and tipped well. Some boys came aboard at Cape Town and tried to catch him at bridge, but he beat 'em."

The prospecting member of the Flack crowd sneered.

"Card people scare suckers," he said, with all the contempt which a land thief has for his seagoing brother. "Besides, these Cape boats are too small, and everybody knows everybody else. A card man could starve on that line. So long. Harry."

Harry, the steward, returned the farewell indifferently and watched the tout hurry down to the examining shed. Martin was waiting for the arrival of the Customs officer with a bored expression on his lean brown face.

"Mr Martin, isn't it?" The advance guard of the confidence men smiled pleasantly as he offered his hand. "I'm Bursen - met you at the Cape," said the newcomer, keeping the high note of heartiness. "Awfully glad to see you again."

His hand was not taken. Two solemn blue eyes surveyed him thoughtfully. The tout was well dressed; his linen was expensive, the massive gold cigarette - case that peeped from his waistcoat pocket was impressive.

"We must meet in town - -"

"At Wandsworth Gaol - or maybe Pentonville," said Dick Martin deliberately. "Get to blazes out of this, you amateur tale - teller!"

The man's jaw dropped.

"Go back to your papa" - Dick's long forefinger dug the man's waistcoat, keeping time with his words - "or to the maiden aunt who taught you that line of talk, and tell him or her that suckers are fetching famine prices at Southampton."

"See here, my friend - " The shoreman began to bluster to cover his inevitable retreat.

"If I kick you into the dock, they'll hold me for the inquest - seep!"

The 'con' man seeped. He was a little angry, a little scared, and very hot under the collar, but he kept well away from the brown - faced man until he saw the first train pull out.

"If he's not a copper, I'm a Dutchman," he said, and felt for his cigarette - case and the solace of shredded Virginia. The case was gone! Precisely at that moment Mr Martin was extracting a cigarette from its well - filled interior, and, weighing the gold in his hand, had concluded that it was at least 15 carat and worth money.

"What a beautiful case!"

The girl sitting opposite to him stretched out her hand, a friendly assurance that was very pleasing to Dick Martin. In her simple tailored costume and a close - fitting little hat she was another kind of girl, radiating a new charm and a new fragrance.

"Yes, it's rather cute," Dick answered soberly. "I got it from a friend. Glad your holiday is over?"

She stifled a sigh as she gave the case back to him. "Yes, in a way. It wasn't exactly a holiday, and it was dreadfully expensive. I can't speak Portuguese either, and that made it difficult."

He raised his eyebrows at that. "But all the hotel folk speak English," he said, and she smiled ruefully.

"I wasn't one of the hotel folk. I lived in a little boarding - house on the Mount, and unfortunately the people I had to see spoke only Portuguese. There was a girl at the boarding - house who knew the language a little, and she was helpful. I might have stayed at home for all the good I did."

He chuckled. "We're in the same boat. I've been thirty thousand miles rustling shadows!"

She smiled whimsically. "Were you looking for a key, too?" she asked, and he stared at her.

"A which?" She opened the patent leather bag that rested on her knees and took out a small cardboard box. Removing the lid, she shook into her hand a flat key of remarkable shape. It was rather like an overgrown Yale, except that the serrations were not confined to one edge, but were repeated in complicated ridges and protuberances on the other.

"That's certainly a queer - looking object," he said. "Was that what you were looking for?"

She nodded.

"Yes - though I didn't know this was all I should get from my trip. Which sounds a little mad, doesn't it? Only - there was a Portuguese gardener named Silva who knew my father. He used to be in the service of a relative of ours. Didn't I boast once that I was related to Lord Selford - by the way, what is he like?"

"Like the letter O, only dimmer," he said. "I never saw him."

She asked a question and then went on: "About three months ago a letter came to my mother. It was written in very bad English by a priest, and said that Silva was dead, and that before he died he asked her forgiveness for all the harm he had done to us. He left something which was only to be given into the hand of a member of our family. That sounds remarkable, doesn't it?"

Dick nodded, impatient for her to continue.

"Of course, it was out of the question for mother or me to go - we have very little money to spare for sea trips. But the day after we got the letter, we had another, posted in London and containing a hundred pounds in notes and a return ticket to Madeira!"

"Sent by?"

She shook her head.

"I don't know. At any rate, I went. The old priest was very glad to see me; he told me that his little house had been burgled three times in one month, and that he was sure the burglars were after the little package he was keeping for me. I expected something very valuable, especially as I learnt that Senhor Silva was a very rich man. You can imagine how I felt when I opened the box and found - this key."

Dick turned the key over in his hand.

"Silva was rich - a gardener, you said? Must have made a lot of money, eh? Did he leave a letter?"

She shook her head.

"Nothing. I was disappointed and rather amused. For some reason or other, I put the key into the pocket of the coat I was wearing, and that was lucky or unlucky for me. I had hardly left the priests' house before a man came out of a side alley, snatched my bag, and was out of sight before I could call for help. There was nothing very valuable in the bag, but it was all very alarming. When I got on board ship, I put the key in an envelope and gave it to the purser."

"Nobody bothered you on the ship?" She laughed quietly as at a good joke. "Not unless you would call the experience of finding your trunk turned out and your bed thrown on to the floor a 'bother'. That happened twice between Madeira and Southampton. Is it sufficiently romantic?"

"It certainly is!" said Dick, drawing a long breath. He looked at the key again. "What number Coram Street?" he asked.

She told him before she realized the impertinence of the question.

"What do you think is the meaning of these queer happenings?" she asked as he passed the cardboard box back to her.

"It's surely queer. Maybe somebody wanted that key badly."

It seemed to her a very lame explanation. She was still wondering what had made her so communicative to a comparative stranger when the train ran into Waterloo Station. She felt a little nettled by his casual farewell; a nod and he had disappeared behind the screen of other passengers and their friends who crowded the platform.

It was a quarter of an hour later before she retrieved her baggage from the welter of trunks that littered the vicinity of the baggage van. A porter found her a cab, and she was tipping him, when a man brushed past her, jostling her arm, whilst a second man bumped into her from the opposite side. Her bag slipped from her hand and fell to the pavement. Before she could stoop, a third man had snatched it from the ground, and, quick as lightning, passed it to an unobtrusive little man who stood behind him. The thief turned to fly, but a hand grasped his collar and jerked him round, and as his hands came up in defence, a fist as hard as ebony caught him under the jaw and sent him flying.

"Get on your feet, thief, and produce your bag - snatching permit!" said Dick Martin sternly.

Chapter 7

 

AT TEN o'clock the next morning Dick Martin walked blithely into Lincoln's Inn Fields. The birds were twittering in the high trees, the square lay bathed in pale April sunshine, and as for Slick, he was at peace with the world, though he had travelled nigh on thirty thousand miles and had failed to report at the end of them.

Messrs Havelock and Havelock occupied an old Queen Anne house that stood shoulder to shoulder with other mansions of the period. A succession of brass plates on the door announced this as the registered office of a dozen corporations, for Mr Havelock was a company lawyer, who, though he never appeared in the courts, gave the inestimable benefit of his advice to innumerable and prosperous corporations.

Evidently the detective was expected, for the clerk in the outer office was almost genial.

"I will tell Mr Havelock you're here," he said, and came back in a few seconds to beckon the wanderer into the private sanctum of the senior partner.

As Dick Martin came in, he was finishing the dictation of a letter, and he smiled a welcome and nodded to a chair. When the dictation was done and the homely stenographer dismissed, he got up from the big writing - table, filling his pipe.

"So you didn't see him?" he asked.

"No, sir. I moved fast, but he was quicker. I got into Rio the day he left. I was in Cape Town just three days after he had gone on overland to Beira - and then I had your cable."

Havelock nodded solemnly, puffing at his pipe.

"The erratic devil!" he said. "You might have come up with him at Beira. He's there yet."

Walking to his desk he pressed a bell, and his secretary made a reappearance.

"Give me the Selford file - the current one," he said, and waited until she had returned and given him a large blue folder. From this he took a cable form and banded it to his visitor. Slick read:

HAVELOCK LONDON. WHO IS THIS MAN MARTIN CHASING AFTER ME? HAVE ALREADY MAILED POWER OF ATTORNEY. PLEASE LEAVE ME ALONE. SHALL BE IN LONDON AUGUST. - PIERCE.

The cable was dated Cape Town, three days before Dick had arrived there.

"I could hardly do anything else," said Mr Havelock, rubbing his nose irritably with his knuckle. "Did you hear anything about him?"

Dick chuckled. "That fellow didn't stand still long enough for anyone to notice him," he said. "I've talked to hotel porters and reception clerks in seven kinds of broken English, and none of 'em had anything on him. He was in Cape Town the day the new High Commissioner arrived from England."

"Well," asked Havelock after a pause, "what has that to do with it?"

"Nothing." Another pause, and then: "What do you really suspect?" asked Dick.

Mr Havelock pursed his lips. "I don't know," he admitted frankly. "At the worst that he has married, or has become entangled in some way with a lady whom he is not anxious to bring to England."

Dick fingered his chin thoughtfully. "Have you had much correspondence from him?" And, when the other nodded: "May I see it?"

He took the portfolio from Mr Havelock's hand and turned the leaves. There were cablegrams, addressed from various parts of the world, long and short letters, brief instructions, obviously in reply to some query that Havelock had sent.

"Those only take you back for a year. I have one or two cases filled with his letters, if you would like to see them?"

Dick shook his head. "These are all in his handwriting?"

"Undoubtedly. There is no question that he is being impersonated, if that is what you mean." The detective handed back the portfolio with a little grimace. "I wish I'd caught up with him," he said. "I'd like to see what kind of bird he is, though I know a dozen young fellows whose feet start itching the moment they sit still. I'm sorry I haven't been more successful, Mr Havelock, but, as I say, this lad is a swift mover. Maybe at some later time I'll ask to see the whole of these letters; I'd like to study them."

"You can see them now if you wish," said the lawyer, reaching for the bell.

The detective stopped him. "So far as the alliance is concerned, I think you can rest your mind. He was alone in New York and alone in San Francisco. He landed without any encumbrances at Shanghai, and I trailed him through India without there being a hint of a lady in the case. When he comes back in August I'd like to meet him."

"You shall." Mr Havelock smiled grimly. "If I can nail him down long enough to give you time to get here."

Dick went home, turning over in his mind two important problems, in his pocket a very handsome cheque for his services. The elderly woman who kept house for him was out marketing when he arrived. Sitting down at his desk, his head in his hands, his untidy hair rumpled outrageously, he went over the last six exciting months of his life, and at the end the question in his mind was not answered. Presently he pulled the telephone towards him and called Havelock.

"I forgot to ask you, why does he call himself Pierce?"

"Who? Oh, you mean Selford? That is his name. Pierce, John Pierce. I forgot to explain to you that he hated his title. Oh, did I? Have you an idea?"

"None," said Slick untruthfully, for he had several ideas. He had unpacked all but one suitcase, and this he now proceeded to turn on to the table. It was full of documents, hotel bills, notes he had made in the course of his tour; and at the bottom of the case a square sheet of blotting - paper, which he took out carefully and held up to the light. It was the blotted impression left by an envelope: Mr Bertram Cody, Weald House, South Weald, Sussex. There was no need to refresh his memory, for he had made a very careful note of the name and address. He had found that sheet of blotting - paper in the private sitting - room at the Plaza Hotel in Buenos Aires which had been occupied, forty - eight hours before his arrival, by the restless Mr Pierce. Nobody had used the room after he had gone until Dick had asked the hotel manager to show him the suite which his quarry had occupied.

He locked away the blotting - paper in a drawer of his desk, strolled into his bedroom, and stood for a long time looking at himself in the glass.

"Call yourself a detective, eh?" he demanded of his reflection, as his lips curled. "You poor, four - flushing mutt!"

He spent the remainder of the day learning a new card trick that he had picked up on the voyage over; an intricate piece of work, consisting of palming a card from the top of the pack and passing it so that it became the ninth card of the pack. With a stop - watch before him he practised, until he managed to accomplish the transfer in the fifteenth part of a second. Then he was satisfied. When dusk descended on the world, he got out his car and drove southward leisurely.

Chapter 8

 

"SHOW HIM in," said Mr Bertram Cody.

He was a little bald man with a gentle voice and the habit of redundancy. He required five minutes to say all that any other man could express in three sentences. Of this fault, if fault it was, he was well aware and made a jest of his weakness.

Fixing his large gold - rimmed spectacles, he peered at the card again -

MR JOHN RENDLE, 194, COLLINS STREET, MELBOURNE

The name meant nothing to Mr Cody. He had known a Rendle in the eighties, a highly respectable tea importer, but the acquaintance was so slight a one that it was hardly likely.

He had been studying a small pocket notebook when the visitor was announced; a red morocco case that had, in addition to diary and writing space, a little pocket for cards, slips for stamps, and a tiny flat purse. He pushed the book under a heap of papers at his hand as the stranger entered.

"Mr Rendle," said a woman's harsh voice in the shadowy part of the room where the door was, and there came out of the gloom a tall, good - looking young man who certainly bore no resemblance to the long - forgotten China merchant.

"Will you sit down?" said Mr Cody gently. "And will you please forgive the semi - darkness in which I live. I find that my eyes are not as good as they were, and the glare of lights produces a very painful effect. This table - lamp, carefully shaded as it is, supplies my needs adequately, though it is insufficient for my visitors. Fortunately, if you will forgive what may appear to you as a rudeness, I receive most of my callers in the daytime."

The visitor had a quick smile, and was evidently a man to whom the semi - darkness of the big, richly - furnished library was in no sense depressing. He groped in the shadows for the chair, which revealed itself by the light on its polished back, and sat down.

"I'm sorry to come at this hour, Mr Cody, but I only arrived yesterday by the Moldavia."

"From China," murmured Mr Cody.

"From Australia - I transhipped at Colombo."

"The Moldavia did not call at Colombo owing to an outbreak of cholera," interrupted Mr Cody, more gently still.

The visitor laughed. "On the contrary, it called, and I and some thirty passengers embarked. The outbreak was reported after we left port. You are confusing the Moldavia with the Morania, which missed the call a week later."

The colour deepened on Mr. Cody's plump face. He was deeply wounded, and in his most tender part, for he had been guilty of an error of fact.

"I beg your pardon," he said in a hushed and humble voice. "I am humiliated to discover that I have made a mistake. It was the Morania - I beg your pardon! The Moldavia had a smooth voyage?"

"No, sir. We ran into the simoon and had three boats carried away - -"

"The two lifeboats on the spar deck and a cutter on the aft deck," nodded Mr Cody. "You also lost a lascar - washed overboard. Forgive me for interrupting you, I am an omnivorous reader."

There was a paused in the conversation here. Mr. Cody, his head on one side, waited expectantly. "Now, perhaps - -?" he suggested, almost timidly. Again the visitor smiled.

"I've called on a curious errand," he said. "I have a small farm near Ten Mile Station - a property which adjoins a station of yours in that part of the world."

Mr Cody nodded slowly. He had many properties in the overseas States: they were profitable investments.

"I have reason to believe that there is gold on your property," Rendle went on. "And I take this view because I am by training an engineer and I know something about metallurgy. Six months ago I made a discovery which, very naturally, I was not anxious to advertise until I was certain of my facts."

He talked lucidly of conglomerate and outcrop, and Bertram Cody listened, nodding his head from time to time. In the course of his description, Mr Rendle unfolded a map on the desk - a small scale map that did not interest Bertram Cody at all.

"My theory is that there is a reef running from here to here… "

When his guest had reached the end of his discourse: "Yes - I know there is gold at Ten Mile Station: the discovery was made by our agent and duly reported to us, so that the fear you had, Mr - er - em - Rendle, that he was keeping his - er - find a secret, had no foundation. There is gold - yes. But not in paying quantities. The matter has already been reported in the newspaper press - um - you would not - have seen that, of course. Nevertheless, I am grateful to you. Human nature is indeed a frail quality, and I cannot sufficiently thank you for your thoughtfulness and - um - the trouble to which you have been put."

"I understand that you bought this property from Lord Selford," asserted Mr Rendle.

The bald man blinked quickly, like a man who was dazzled by a bright light. "From his - er - agents: an eminent firm of lawyers. I forget their names for the moment. His lordship is abroad, you know. I believe that he is difficult to get at." He spread out his plump hands in a gesture of helplessness. "It is difficult! This young man prefers to spend his life in travel. His agents hear of him in Africa - they have a letter from the - um - wild pampas of the Argentine - they send him money to China - an adventurous life, my dear young friend, but unnerving to his - um - relations, if he has relations. I am not sure."

He shook his head and sighed; then, with a start, as though he were for the first time aware that there was an audience to his perturbations, he rose and held out both his hands.

"Thank you for coming," he breathed, and Mr Rendle found his own hand encased in two warm, soft palms. "Thank you for your interest. Life is a brighter place for such disinterestedness."

"Do you ever hear from him?" asked the visitor.

"From - um - his lordship? No, no! He is ignorant of my existence. Oh, dear, no!" He took the visitor's arm and walked with him to the door. "You have a car?" He was almost grateful to his guest for the possession of such an article. "I am glad. It looks like being a stormy night - and it is late. Half past ten, is it not? A safe journey to town!"

He stood under the portico until the rear lights of the car had disappeared behind a clump of rhododendrons that bordered the drive, then he went back into the hall.

The stout, hard woman in black silk, who Dick had thought was Mr Cody's housekeeper, followed her husband into the study and closed the door behind him.

"Who was he?" she asked. Her voice was uneducated, strident, and complaining.

Mr Cody resumed his place behind the heavy writing - table and smiled blissfully as he lowered himself into the padded chair.

"His name is Dick Martin," he said, "and he is a detective."

Mrs Cody changed colour. "Good Gawd! Detective! Bertie, what did he come here for?" She was agitated; the fat, beringed hand that went up to her mouth was trembling. "You're sure?" she quavered.

Mr Cody nodded.

"A clever man - but I expected him. I have at least three photographs of him. I wonder," said Mr Cody softly. "I really wonder!"

He slipped his hand under the heap of papers to find the little notebook, and suddenly his face went pale.

"It's gone - my book and the key - my God! the key!"

He reeled to his feet like a drunken man, blank terror in his face.

"It was when he showed me that map!" he muttered hoarsely. "I'd forgotten that the fellow is an expert thief. Shut that damned door. I want to telephone!"

Chapter 9

 

DICK DROVE a six - cylinder coupe whose bodywork had seen better days, though he claimed for its engine that the world had not seen its equal. With his screen - wiper wiping furiously, he came cautiously along the Portsmouth Road, his big headlamps staring whitely ahead. The rain was pelting down, and since he must have a window open, and that window was on the weather side, one arm and part of the shoulder of his rainproof coat were soon black and shining.

'107, Coram Street,' said his subconscious mind; and he wondered why he had connected this satisfactory visit of his to Mr Bertram Cody with that trim girl who was so seldom absent from his thoughts.

From time to time his hand sought his pocket and the flat leather book that reposed at the bottom. There was something hard inside that purse; he thought it was money at first; and then, in a flash, he realized that it was the touch of this notebook which recalled Sybil Lansdown. He pulled the car up so quickly that it skidded across the road and only missed a ditch by a matter of inches. Straightening the machine, he switched on the interior light and examined his 'find'. Before he unfastened the thin flap of the purse he knew what it contained. But he was unprepared for the shape and size of the key that lay in his palm. It was an almost exact replica, in point of size, of that which Sybil Lansdown had shown him in the train, and which was now in the strongroom of his bank.

Dick whistled softly to himself, replaced the book in his pocket, but slipped the key under the rubber mat beneath his feet. The enterprising gentlemen who had made such strenuous efforts, and gone to such expense, to secure Sybil Lansdown's key would not hesitate to hold up a car.

Dick was beginning to have a respect for the brethren of the keys, and had found for himself an adventure which surpassed in interest the chasing of peregrinating noblemen. He turned off the interior light and sent his car forward along the rainswept road, meditating upon the weird character of his discovery Cody had denied he was in communication with this strange Lord Selford - why? And what was the meaning of the key Dick had seen the oily man push the book under the papers as he entered, and, out of sheer devilment and his love for discovery, had seized the first opportunity of extracting the case? He would compare the two keys in the morning.

In the meantime it would be well for him to keep his mind concentrated upon the road ahead. Once a lumbering lorry had almost driven him into the ditch, and now, with twenty miles to go, he saw ahead of him three red lights, and slowed his engine till he came within a dozen yards of them. They were red lamps, placed in a line on the road, and if they meant anything it was that the road was under repair and closed. And yet - he had passed the lorry going at full speed only a mile away. That must have come along the forbidden stretch of road.

He peered through the open window and saw on his right a dilapidated wall, the top of which was hidden under a blanket of wild ivy. He saw, by the lights of the headlamps, a gap, where there was evidently a gate. All this he took in at a glance, and he turned to the scrutiny of the road and the three red lights.

"Yes, yes,' said Slick to himself, switched out all the lights of the car, and, taking something from his hip pocket, he opened the door quietly and stepped into the rain, standing for a while listening.

There was no sound, except the swish and patter of the storm. Keeping to the centre of the road, he advanced slowly towards the red lamps, picked up the middle of these and looked at it. It was very old; the red had been hastily painted on the glass. The second lamp was more new, but of an entirely different pattern, and here also the glass pane had been covered by some red, transparent paint. And this was the case with the third lamp.

He threw the middle light into the ditch, and found a satisfaction in hearing the crash of the glass. Then he came back to his car, got inside, slammed the door, and put his foot on the starter. The little motor whined round, but the engine did not move. There must be some reason for this, he thought, for the car was hot, and never before had it failed. Again he tried, without success; then, getting down from the machine, he walked to the back to examine the petrol tank. There was no need, for the little indicator dial said 'Empty'.

'Yes, yes,' said Slick again, staring down at this evidence of his embarrassment.

He had filled up before he reached Mr Cody's house, but, be that as it may, here was a trustworthy indicator pointing starkly to 'E', and when he tapped the tank it gave forth a hollow sound in confirmation.

He sniffed: the place reeked. Flashing his pocket - lamp on the ground, he saw a metal cap and picked it up, and then understood what had happened. The wet roadway was streaked opalescently. Somebody had taken out the cap and emptied his tank whilst he was examining the lights.

He refastened the cap, which was both airproof, waterproof and foolproof, and which could only have been turned by the aid of a spanner; and he had heard no chink of metal against metal. He carried no reserve, so that he was stranded beyond hope of succour, unless - -

He sent his lamp in the direction of the gateway. One of the hinges of the gate was broken, and the rotting structure leaned drunkenly against a laurel bush. Until then he had not dreamed that he was anywhere near Gallows Cottage. But now he recognized the place.

Keeping his light on, he went up the long avenue quickly. On either side was a tangle of thick bush, which had grown at its will, unattended by a gardener. Overhead the tall poplars met in an arch. Keeping the light glowing from side to side, he passed up the gloomy avenue. Suddenly he stopped. Under the shadow of the hedge he saw a long, narrow hole. It had been recently dug and was, he judged, six feet deep.

"That looks like a home from home," he shuddered, and passed on to the square, ugly house, which had once been covered by plaster, broken now in a dozen places, showing the bare brick beneath.

Never had it seemed so mean looking as when the broad beam of his lamp picked out the patches and fissures in its walls. The entrance was a high, narrow doorway, above which was a little wooden canopy, supported by two iron bars let into the brickwork - he noted these most carefully now. There was no sign of life; no dog barked. The place was dead - rotting.

He waited a second before he mounted the two steps that brought the knocker within reach. As the clapper fell, he heard the sound echoing hollowly through the hall. Had he been a stranger he might easily have imagined that the place was empty, he thought, when no reply came. He knocked again. In a few minutes he heard a sound of feet in the hall, the rusty crackle of a key being turned, and the jingling of chains. The door opened a foot, and there appeared in the light of Dick's lamp the long, sallow face and the black beard.

The apparition was so startling that Dick, expectant as he was, nearly dropped his lamp.

"Who is this? What is this?" asked a voice pettishly. "Petrol? You have lost your petrol? Ach! that is foolish. Yes, I can give you some, if you pay for it. I cannot afford to give anything away."

He gave no sign of recognition, but opened the door wider, and Dick walked into the hall, turning as he did so to face the man who had let him in. Dr Stalletti wore a black overall, belted at the waist, and indescribably stained. On his feet were a pair of long, Russian boots, worn and cracked and amateurishly patched. He had no collar. What Dick noticed first was that this strange person had not apparently washed since they last met. His big, powerful hands were grimy, his nails were almost like talons. By the light of the small oil - lamp he carried, Martin saw that the hall was expensively furnished; the carpet was thick and almost new, the hangings of velvet, the chairs and settees of gilt and damask, must have cost a lot of money. A silver chandelier hung from the plastered ceiling, and the dozen or so electric candles it held supplied a brilliant light to the room. But here, as in the passage, everything was inches thick in dust. It rose in a small cloud as he walked across the thick carpet.

"You wait here, please. I will get you petrol - one shilling and tenpence a gallon."

Dick waited, heard the feet of his host sound hollowly, and presently grow faint. He made a careful inspection of the room. There was nothing here to indicate either the character or the calling of this strange, uncleanly man.

Presently he heard the man returning and the thud of two petrol tins as they were put down in the hall, and then his strange benefactor appeared, dusting his hands.

"Four gallons of petrol of the highest grade."

The visitor might have been a stranger for all the signs he made of recognition, and yet Dick was sure that the man knew him; and as though he guessed his visitor's thoughts, the bearded man announced, with a certain amount of pomposity:

"I am the Professor Stalletti. We have, I think, met. It was because of a book you came."

"That is so, professor." Dick was alert, somewhere inside him a warning voice was speaking insistently.

"You have heard of me - yes? It is known in science. Come, come, my friend, pay your money and be gone."

"I am much obliged to you, professor," drawled Dick. "Here's ten shillings - we won't quarrel about the change."

To his surprise, the bearded man pocketed the note with a smirk of satisfaction. Evidently he was not too proud to make a profit on the transaction.

Walking to the front door, he opened it, and Dick followed him, making his exit sideways and keeping his face to this queer - looking man. The professor opened his mouth as though he were going to speak, but changed his mind and slammed the door in his visitor's face, and as he did so, there came, from somewhere in the house, behind those blind windows, such a scream of fear and agony as made the detective's blood run cold. It was a wail that rose to a shriek and died sobbingly to silence.

Perspiration stood on Dick Martin's face, and for a second he had the mind to force his way back into the house and demand an explanation. And then he saw the senselessness of that move, and, carrying a petrol tin in either hand, made his way down the drive. He was wearing rubber - soled shoes that caused little or no noise, and he was glad, for now his ears must serve where his eyes failed. By reason of his burden he had to dispense with the use of his lamp.

He had passed that section of the hedge where he had seen the hole, when his quick ears detected something moving behind him. It was the faintest sound, and only one with his keen sense of hearing could have detected it above the noise of the falling rain. It was not a rustle; it was something impossible to describe. Dick turned round and began to walk backwards, staring into the pitch black darkness before him. The noise grew more distinct. A twig snapped in the bushes to his right. then suddenly he saw his danger and dropped the tins. Before he could reach his gun he was at grips with a something, naked, hairless, bestial.

Huge bare arms were encircling his shoulders; a great hand was groping for his face, and he struck blindly at a bare torso, so muscled that, even as he struck, he realized that he was wasting his strength. Suddenly, with a mighty effort, he jerked round, gripped the huge arm with both his hands, and, stooping, jerked his assailant over his head. There was a thud, a groan, a ghastly sobbing, blubbering sound that was not human, and in the next fraction of a second Dick's automatic was in his hand and the safety catch pushed down.

"Stay where you are, my friend," he breathed. "I'd like to have a look at you."

He picked up the torch he had dropped and turned the light on the ground. Nobody was there. He flashed the lamp left and right without discovering a trace of his assailant. Was he behind him? Turning, he sent the rays in the direction of the house, and in that second caught sight of a great figure, naked except for a loincloth, disappearing into the bushes.

"Jumping snakes!" breathed Dick Martin, and lost not a second in reaching the road, refilled the empty tank and started the engine.

In a little while he was following the road to London, absorbed in the problem of Dr Stalletti, and the big hole in the ground, recently dug, and intended, he did not doubt, for the reception of his own body.