第 24 页

"Unfortunately, the shock of her terrible experience a few days ago proved too much for poor Nora, and on her way to Heartsease "

"Is she here?" Betcher asked quickly.

Mr. Cravel nodded.

"On her way to Heartsease she collapsed, and in spite of all the assistance which could be rendered by the doctor in town— died."

"Dead?" Betcher Long's eyes were half closed. "You're a liar, Cravel! You're trying to rattle me. You can try again! And if she is dead"— the gun in his hand did not so much as shake—"if she is dead, I'm going to carry out my promise, and nothing can save you."

Again the man shrugged.

"It is a lamentable fact," he said. "I thought you knew. My sister is not usually so reticent."

"She knew?" asked Betcher softly.

Cravel nodded.

"Where is Nora Sanders?"

To his amazement, the man waved his hand in the direction of the door leading into the room where Monkford had met his death.

"We put her there," he said. "Your friend the Professor is with her. What a clever fellow you are!" he went on, with heavy jocularity. "To come straight to this place! You must have a lover's instinct!"

"Walk!" said Betcher curtly, his gun pointing to the man's waist, and his other hand to the door. "We'll see how far your joke carries," he said, "and I have an idea it will be a poor joke for you, my friend."

The man strolled leisurely up the room to the door communicating with the bedroom, turned the handle, and threw it wide open.

"Go in!" said Betcher, and followed slowly, all his senses alert.

The curtains of the bedroom had been half drawn. The gray light that streamed through the narrow space between gave the apartment an eerie, unearthly look. But of this he was not conscious. He stood, paralyzed with amazement, in the open doorway.

Facing him was a bed pulled up level with the wall, and on the bed, her face white as milk, her lips colourless and her eyes closed, was Nora Sanders! He could only stare open-mouthed, his brain for a while refusing to function.

It was true, then; she was dead. Why else had they brought him here?

A movement at the foot of the bed, and he saw in the shadow of an alcove a queer, unfamiliar shape— an old man, his untidy white hair falling about his cheeks. The light glinted on his big spectacles. He was glaring at Betcher with a grin of hate.

"Don't move, anybody! Stand over there, Cravel. If either of you pull a gun I'll shoot!"

His eyes came back to the still figure on the bed. Dead! It was impossible to believe. Then, through the frozen surface of his sorrow bubbled the hot rage within him.

"You swine!" he hissed.

He took a stride forward; his second step brought him to the centre of the carpet by the bed. He felt it yield under him, and strove to fling himself back. But he was too late; the balance had shifted before he could recover. He flung out his hand to reach the edge of the great hole in the floor which the carpet had hidden, missed it, and fell. His head struck violently against a scaffold pole and he knew no more.

Chapter 38

A FEW minutes later Mr. Cravel walked leisurely down the stairs out to the porch where Rouch was standing, gazing dismally at the falling rain.

"Inspector Long is staying to breakfast," he said.

"Oh, is he?" said Sergeant Rouch, in his most unfriendly tone. "Does he want me to go up?"

"Not yet. He has asked for certain documents which he is examining, and in which, I presume, he expects to find some evidence of my criminal mind."

"Oh, does he?" Sergeant Rouch permitted himself to ask coldly.

Cravel unlocked the door of his office and went in, and presently Rouch heard him come out and the snap of the key turning. He did not trouble to look behind him, and that was his undoing.

The blow that Cravel struck would have killed an ordinary man, but the sergeant wore a thick derby hat. Under the impact of the blow he stumbled on to his knees. The truncheon rose and fell again. Cravel stooped and, grasping the man under the arms, dragged him out to where Betcher's motor car was standing, and, hoisting him into the tonneau, threw the rug over him. From his office he wheeled a light motor-cycle, and this he strapped leisurely to the side of the car, resting the wheels on the running board. This done, he got up to the driver's seat and sent the machine down the drive.

A quarter of an hour later the car passed through Egham, turned abruptly into the Runnymede Meadows, and followed the Windsor road, which runs parallel with the river. At a point where the bank drops steeply to the water he got out, leaving the engines running, and detached his motor-cycle. Turning the wheel, he threw in the gear and the car jerked forward, wobbled up a little rise, then down a steep slope, and plunging into the river, turned turtle.

He looked at his watch; it was now half-past five, and, mounting the motor-cycle, he went back to Heartsease.

The girl and the old man were gone when he entered the room, and, looking round, he saw the pistol which the detective had dropped. It was still lying where it had fallen at the edge of the pit. Slipping the Browning into his pocket, he rolled up the carpet, removing it to the saloon. The bed had already been dismantled of sheets and coverings, and with a final glance round he locked the door of the untidy room and went downstairs.

There was work for him to do. From his office there was a narrow flight of stairs that led down to a cellar, from which the wine had been removed only a few days before. With a lamp in one hand and his truncheon in the other, he descended the stairs and walked along the brick floor until he came to a place immediately beneath a square hole that had been cut in the vaulted roof by the builders. Had he looked up, he could have seen through the scaffold pole the gap through which Betcher Long had fallen. But he had come upon another errand, and he caught his breath as, flashing the lamp to and fro, he failed to discover the man whom he thought to find dead or dying on the brick floor.

Betcher Long was gone! There was no evidence that he had ever been here; no sign of blood. He uttered an imprecation under his breath. It was impossible that the detective could have escaped serious injury. Perhaps the others had moved him. Again he searched the cellar, opening an interior room and examining it, too.

Betcher Long, alive, maddened by the sight he had seen... ? Never before in his life had this hard-faced man felt the twinge of fear, but he was terrified now. He locked the door of his office the moment he reached ground level, and, pouring out a stiff dose of brandy, drank it in one gulp. There was a knock at the door; it was the early-duty cook, who had been to Cravel's room for the keys of the kitchen.

The old woman was deaf and was the only servant that had slept at Heartsease that night, for it was mid-week, and there were no guests in the hotel. He unlocked the door, handed the kitchen keys to her, though this was not necessary, for he had made the coffee that morning and had left the kitchen door open, as she came back to explain in some alarm.

He went up the stairs to the second floor, and walked to the far end of the passage, and put a key into what appeared to be a part of a solid wall. It was a door of steel, and beyond this was a suite which did not appear in the list of apartments available for guests. This consisted of two rooms, a tiny bathroom, and a kitchenette, and was Cravel's winter quarters when the hotel was closed. He fastened the steel door and went into the smaller of the two rooms. A girl was lying on the bed, perfectly motionless and apparently lifeless, save for the slight rise and fall of her breast, which only a keen eye would detect.

He lifted the bare arm and examined the three punctures, one of which was recent. On the table by the bedside was a small green bottle and an open hypodermic case. Raising an eyelid with his fingertip, he saw that she did not flinch, or show the slightest sensibility to light, and, with a grunt of satisfaction, he went to the other room.

This was empty. On the table was a note scribbled in pencil, which he read, and, having read, burnt in the open fireplace.

Where was Betcher Long? That was the absorbing problem. There was no reference to him in the note. He took the detective's pistol from his pocket, examined it curiously, and laid it on the table behind him— the very appearance of the gun deepened his anxiety. For a long time he sat on the edge of the table, a cigarette between his lips, his arms folded, gazing moodily out of the window, which showed the angle of a wall and a clear view across the golf links. Supposing Betcher was dead somewhere and had been removed after the note had been written? The search for him would not begin until later in the morning. The car would be found in the river, and the body of Rouch would lead to dragging. That would take time.

He wondered what had happened to Alice. Why had she gone back to her flat instead of coming on and taking her part in that crisis? Alice puzzled him. She had been as hard and as remorseless as any, had taken all risks and feared nothing, and now she had weakened at a moment when she would have been so helpful.

A voice called him from below. He opened the door quickly and ran to the balustrade overlooking the hall.

It was his sister; the soddened clothing hung to her figure; the face, wet with rain, was looking up at him. "Come down," she said, and he obeyed.

"Where have you been—"

She interrupted him with an impatient gesture. "Where is Long?"

He shook his head.

"I don't know; he got away."

She did not believe him— the very fact that she refrained from putting any further question was proof of it.

"I've been on the Sunningdale road," she said, "and I found something— a taxi-driver!"

Cravel frowned at this.

"Don't be more mysterious than you can help," he growled. "What has a taxi-driver to do with me?"

"A lot, I think," she answered. "He was standing at the end of the lane that runs along the park boundary, and he seemed fairly pleased with himself. I saw his cab parked under the elms, and he said he had been there since soon after midnight. He drove somebody here."

"Who?"

She shook her head.

"That is what I wanted to know. I 'freshed' him, but he wouldn't tell me. A gray-haired man who picked him up at the corner of Berkeley Square— that was all he would tell me, though I have an idea that he could have told me more. Sonny, there is somebody in this house— somebody you know nothing about."

He blinked rapidly in his perturbation.

"Fiddlesticks!" he snapped. "There is nobody here except—"

She rightly understood his hesitation.

"She is here, then? You're playing with fire— and not ordinary fire either!" she said intensely. "Sonny, get out of it while you can. You may be too late in an hour's time. The going isn't any too good, but there is at least a chance. Won't you take it?"

A smile dawned on his harsh face.

"When everything we want is in our hands?" he asked contemptuously. "Am I a fool? No, we've gone too far. There is only one thing to do now, and that is to stick it out."

She was looking at him thoughtfully; he had the feeling that she was not especially interested in his fate any longer and that she would presently change the subject in her abrupt way to something which touched her more nearly. Here he was right.

"I'm wet through— I think I will change," she said.

Her apartment was immediately under that of her brother, and resembled it in all particulars, except that there was no mystery about the door.

He waited for her, pacing up and down the tiled floor of the lounge, until she came down again. Then he saw, to his surprise, that, over her dry clothes, she wore a rubber coat.

"You're not going out again, are you?"

"Yes; I told the garage man I was returning. They are bringing in my car, and the garage is useful. It is on the main road, it has a telephone. I expect to be there all morning."

He smiled again.

"What else do you expect?"

"Trouble," she said in a low voice, "bad, bad trouble. Have they gone— the other people?"

He nodded.

"You've lost your nerve, kid. Jackie, I suppose? It was an accident— he shot himself in the struggle, the poor fool." Then, as he saw the blank face, "I'll swear to it, Alice! He was dead when we pulled him out of the water the second time. The hanging was ghastly, but you know— the Professor never forgave Jackie for the Colchester business. Hated him— poor devil."

He waited, his hands flung wide in protest, but she was not convinced; no more now than when he had first told the story.

"An automatic killed him," she said briefly. "Jackie had only an old service revolver; the newspapers were very certain about the Browning bullet, but we won't go into that."

She walked to the door and glanced left and right. The rain was teeming down, but she was not inspecting the weather.

"If he is not in the house, he is in the grounds. I should search, if I were you— no, I shouldn't! I should bolt!"

"You're not me," he said tritely.

She had come to the house on a bicycle, one she had borrowed at the garage. He watched her till she had passed out of sight; then, going up to his room, he took up Betcher's pistol, thrust it into the pocket of the raincoat he donned, and, with one glance at the drugged girl, he closed and locked the door and went out to search the grounds.

First he made a careful scrutiny of the immediate neighbourhood of the hotel and found nothing.

Part of the lawn facing the portico had been dug up to divert the electric cable that supplied the house. Here, on the soft loam, he found the trace of a footstep— a big, square-toed foot and the impress of a rubber heel.

At the sight of this, his interest in the girl's theory quickened. Presently he found two more footprints in a patch of the lawn where the grass had worn thin. They came from the direction of the drive.

He lit a cigarette with difficulty and stood for a while debating the problem.

Who was the man who had come in the cab and what was his object? There was a short cut to the boundary lane and, acting on an impulse, he crossed the lawn and, following the path which led through a clump of laurels, he came to a wicket gate which opened on to the lane.