minutes it took me to push my way through thatloathsome tangle of evil-smelling cobwebs alive with spiders. I wouldnot go through such an experience again for any sum.
At last I got through them, and I recollect thinking, as I emerged, howfoolish I had been to take the wrong turning.
Of course, when Vera had led me out we must have come by the otherpassage, as there had been no cobwebs then. And that led me further towonder whether at that time the passage had not been in regular use bysome person or persons. I did not for a moment believe that old Taylorhad been so conscientious as to keep either passage free of cobwebs,seeing how utterly neglected had been the rest of the house.
In the servants' quarters, where I presently found myself, I recognisedat once that same acrid smell of dry rot I had noticed when last in thehouse, only now it was more "pronounced." Noiselessly I crept along, inmy rubber shoes, to the hall. Everywhere the deathly stillness was sointense that one seemed almost to feel it. Cautiously I crept up thefront stairs, keeping close to the wall in order to prevent theircreaking. My electric torch proved most useful.
I was outside the door of the drawing-room that overlooked BelgraveStreet--the first room I had entered on that previous occasion--the roominto which I had peered the night before, as I stood upon the ladder. Atiny ray of faint light percolated through the keyhole. I listened,hardly breathing, but could hear no sound at all, except my ownheart-beats.
Should I turn the handle gently, slowly push the door ajar, and peep in?It might squeak. Should I fling open the door and rush in? Faced witha problem, I was undecided. I admit that at that moment I felt inclinedto run away. Instead, I stood motionless, hesitating, frightened at myown temerity. Had I, after all, been wise in disregarding Vera's goodadvice?
I thought of that curious brown stain I remembered so distinctly uponthe ceiling in this very room. It had been in the right hand corner--the corner farthest from me. What was above that corner? Ah, I knewjust where that spot would be in the room above.
Suddenly an idea struck me. I would creep up to the next floor andenter the room above. I had taken from the bunch about eight keys Ithought might prove of use. Vera had told me which they were. All wereloose in different pockets, each with a tag tied to it, bearing the nameof the room it belonged to.
The room upstairs was in darkness, but the door of it was not locked.Cautiously I entered, pushed to the door behind me, and then pressed thebutton of my electric torch.
Everything was in disorder. Most of the dusty furniture had been pushedinto a corner. Some of it was still covered with sheets, but much of itwas not. Clearly people had been in here a good deal of late. I pickedmy way between various pieces of furniture across to the corner Isought. On arriving there I started, and at once switched off my light.
In the floor at that corner, was a big hole, a very big hole indeed,several feet across.
The carpet had been rolled back. The boards had all been ripped up.Two of the beams below them had been sawed across, and about three feetof each of these beams removed. The ceiling of the room below had beensmashed away--this I judged to be the exact spot where the brown stainhad been--and, as I cautiously bent forward, and craned my neck, I couldsee right down into the drawing-room.
Voices were murmuring--men's voices. The sight upon which my gazerested made me recoil.
Stretched out on the floor, right below me, was a human body--shrivelled, dry, quite brown, but undoubtedly a body. It looked exactlylike a mummy, a mummy five feet or more in length. Beside it knelt twofigures. As I looked, I saw them slowly lift the body from the floor,one man holding either end of it. In a moment or two they had carriedit out of sight. And the men who had taken it away were Sir CharlesThorold and the man I had known as Davies, but whose name I now knew tobe Whichelo.
This was more, a great deal more than I had expected or even dreamt Ishould see when I entered the house of mystery.
What could it all mean? Had there been foul play? And if so, hadThorold had a hand in it? I could not think this possible. And yetwhat other construction could I possibly place upon what I had justwitnessed?
I did not know what to think, much less had I any idea of what I oughtnow to do. And then, all at once, an inspiration came to me.
I took several long breaths. Then, setting my voice at a low, unnaturalpitch, I gave vent to a deep, long-drawn-out wail, gradually raising myvoice until it ended in a weird shriek.
The stillness below became intense. I paused for perhaps half-a-minute.Then I slowly repeated the wail, ending this time in a kind ofunearthly yell.
I knew I had achieved my purpose--knew that the men below wereterrified, panic-stricken. I could picture them kneeling beside theshrivelled corpse, literally petrified by horror, their eyes startingfrom their sockets, their faces bloodless.
Then I walked with measured tread about the floor, the dull "plunkplunk" of my rubber soles sounding, in the depth of the night, and inthe stillness of that unoccupied house--ghostly even to me. Next Ibegan to push the furniture about, and a moment later I slammed thedoor.
There was a wild, a frantic stampede. Both men had sprung to their feetand were dashing headlong down the stairs. I pursued them in thedarkness! They heard the quick patter of my rubber shoes upon thestairs behind them, and it seemed to give them wings. Furniture wasknocked spinning in the darkness. A terrific crash echoed through thehouse as, in their blind rush, they hurled on to the stone floor of thehall a big china vase the height of a man which had stood upon apedestal. A door slammed. Then another, more faintly, a long way downsome corridor.
Then once more all was still.
Chuckling at the grim humour of the situation, I went slowly up thestairs again. There was still a light in the first-floor room. Ipushed the door open and walked boldly in.
I halted, surprise had petrified me.
The sight that my eyes rested upon I shall not forget as long as ever Ilive!
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE.
CONTAINS ANOTHER REVELATION.
I stood still in horror, my eyes riveted upon the shrivelled human body.It was stretched out upon several chairs placed side by side. Thesight was most gruesome.
Near it, upon the floor, was an ordinary packing-case, in the bottom ofwhich a quantity of wood shavings had been pressed down, to form a sortof bed. At once I realised that this box had been prepared for thereception of the body.
It was about to be smuggled out of the house!
But how did it come to be there? Whose body was it? How long had itbeen dead? And how had the man--for I saw it was the body of a man,apparently a man of middle-age--come by his death?
It was not the sight of the Thing that had startled me, however, for Ihad expected to see it there.
What had taken my breath away had been the sight of great heaps of coinupon the floor, gold coin which had evidently just been emptied out ofthe little sacks close by. Near by were some glass bottles containingpowdered metal, some bottles of coloured fluid, and various implements--a couple of metal moulds, a ladle, a miniature hand-lathe, severalfiles, and some curiously-fashioned tools which I judged must befinishing tools used in the manufacture of coin.
The truth was plain--a ghastly unexpected truth.
Thorold and Whichelo were, or had been, in some way concerned in issuingbase coin, though to me it seemed hardly possible that Sir Charles couldactually be implicated. I picked up a handful of the shining coins, andlet them fall between my fingers in a golden stream. If they were notgolden French louis they were certainly fine imitations. All the coinswere French twenty and ten-franc pieces, I noticed. There were noBritish coins among them, nor were there coins of any other nation. Inall, there must have been several thousands of them.
When I had recovered from my surprise, I began to examine the body moreclosely. With my electric torch I ran a flash all along it and to andfro. It was the body of a man about thirty, I definitely decided, andit was swathed in brown rags. I had seen
bodies in the catacombs inRome and in Paris that looked like this, and also in South America I hadseen some.
South America! My thought of that continent set up a fresh train ofthought in my mind. It made me think of Mexico, and the thought ofMexico, though not in South America, brought the tall, dark man,Whichelo, back to me vividly. He had been in Mexico a great deal at onetime, Vera had told me. And this mummified body lying in front of me--yes, it singularly resembled the mummified bodies I had seen in Mexicowhen on my travels about the world.
What had caused death? Critical inspection with my electric torchshowed distinctly a fracture at the base of the skull, as though it hadbeen struck with some blunt implement, such as a hammer.
Yes, there could be no doubt that the skull had been severely fractured.I should have held the theory that the poor fellow had been attackedfrom behind, felled to the ground with some iron weapon. I wonderedgreatly how long the man had been dead. No expert knowledge was neededto decide that he must have been dead a number of years. And where hadthe body been hidden all this time?
Instinctively I glanced at the ceiling--at the gaping hole in it--andinstantly I knew. This mummified body had been hidden away, buriedbetween the ceiling and floor! It had been in that corner, where thehole now was. And the brown stain I had noticed in the corner of theceiling...
But the money? Why, of course, the money must have been there, too. Athought struck me. I picked up some of the coins again, and glanced atthe dates. Twenty-five or thirty years ago they were dated, yet theylooked quite new. Clearly, then, they had not been in circulation.Paulton's significant remark returned to me--the remark he had made thatnight in the room in Chateau d'Uzerche, when I had said something aboutnot revealing Sir Charles Thorold's secret.
Could there be some hidden connexion between this discovery I had made,Thorold's secret, and the charge upon which Paulton was "wanted?"
I spent some time in examining the room and its contents. Then Iexplored other parts of the house.
Was I now gradually approaching the solution of Sir Charles Thorold'ssecret?
I believed it more than likely that I might now at last be well on myway to solving the mystery of Houghton Park and the Thorolds' suddenflight. That Sir Charles and his big friend would not return that nightI fully believed. They might, or might not, be superstitious, but therecould be no doubt I had terrified them thoroughly. If they returned atall it would be in the daytime, I conjectured.
What was to be done? How should I act?
I decided that the only thing to do would be to go out into the streetand inform the constable of all that had happened. I had told him Iwould not stay long in the house in any case, and my prolonged absencemight be making him feel uneasy.
I left by the front door--which I found securely bolted and chained onthe inside--and there found the constable flashing his bull's-eyelantern upon the door, and with his truncheon ready drawn.
"Hush!" I whispered, and he smiled upon seeing me, and at once replacedhis truncheon.
"I was beginning to feel very anxious on your account, sir," he said."I 'arf wondered who might be a-comin' out. Well, sir, did you seeanything?"
"I should say so," I answered, and then, as briefly as I could, I toldhim nearly everything.
I persuaded him to come in then and there.
"Well, look at that, now!" he said, as I showed him first the mummifiedbody, then the sacks of gold, and pointed out to him the great hole cutin the ceiling. "Well, look at that, now!" he repeated.
"The awkward part of the affair is this," I said at last. "Who is goingto lodge information? I don't care to, for, if I do, inquiries will bemade as to how I came to be on the premises at all, and how I managed toget in, and it won't look well if I am proved, on my own showing, tohave entered the place secretly in the middle of the night. Again, Idon't want to lodge information against Sir Charles Thorold. Why shouldI? He has always been my friend. Nor, for that matter, do I want toprefer any sort of charge against Whichelo. So far as the body isconcerned, we may be quite wrong in conjecturing that there has beenfoul play. Indeed, there is no actual proof that the mummy was hiddenin the ceiling of the room, though personally I think it must have been.Everything points to it. And you, Bennett, can't very well giveinformation either without compromising yourself as well as me. Yourinspector would want to know how you managed to get into the house, andwhat right you had to enter it."
I paused, considering, while he removed his helmet and scratched hishead.
"I'll tell you what I think we had better do," I said at last.
"Well, sir, what?" he inquired eagerly.
"Nothing. Nothing at all. Go back to your beat. I'll bolt and chainthe front door when you're gone. Then I'll put out the light in thisroom, and make my way out of the house by the way I entered it."
"But the two men," the policeman said quickly. "Where can they have gotto? They can't have left the premises."
"You may depend upon it they have," I answered. "I feel pretty surethere must be some secret entrance to this house, that they alone know.The back door, too, is bolted and chained on the inside, and they canhardly have entered the way I did--ugh!" and I shuddered again at thethought of those horrible, hairy-legged spiders scampering over my bareflesh.
"_Meet me_ 2."
Again that odd little advertisement arose in my thoughts. I would watchthe front page of the _Morning Post_ for a day or two. Perhaps anotheradvertisement might appear that would help me.
Early next day I went and told Vera everything. I found her seated inthe lounge on the right of the hall.
She listened eagerly, and I saw at once that the news excited her a gooddeal, yet to my surprise she made no comment, but changed the subject ofconversation by remarking--
"Violet brought Frank Faulkner here yesterday evening. He is engaged tobe married to her. He has broken off his engagement to Gladys Deroxe,and I am very glad he has," she declared.
"Really," I exclaimed. "Well, frankly I'm not surprised, for I believehe has been in love with Violet from the moment he first met her. Buthow did Miss Deroxe take it? Was there a dreadful scene?"
"Scene? There was no scene at all, it appears. What happened wassimply this. Gladys discovered that Frank had brought Violet over fromthe Riviera, that she was staying here at his expense, and that heseemed to be extremely attentive to her. Now, a sensible girl wouldhave asked her future husband, in a case of that sort, to come to seeher and explain everything. That, certainly, is what I should havedone."
"And what did Miss Deroxe do?"
"Do? Good Heavens, she sat down then and there and wrote him a letter--oh! such a letter! He showed it to me. I have never in my life readanything so insulting. She ended by telling him in writing that she hadnever really cared for him, and that she hoped she would never see himagain. In one place she wrote: `I might have guessed the kind of manyou are by the kind of company you keep. I know all about your friend,Richard Ashton. He associates with dreadful people. I am only glad Ihave found you out before it was too late!' Those were her words. Soyou see the kind of reputation you have acquired, my dear Dick."
I laughed--laughed uproariously. I, "the associate of dreadful people,"I, a member of that hot-bed of conventions and of respectability,Brooks's Club. The whole thing was delicious.
"When will Frank and Violet be here again?"
I asked presently, after we had ascended together to the privatesitting-room.
"I've invited Frank to lunch. I told them you were coming. Frank hassomething important to tell you, he said."
"Did he tell you what?"
"No. At least it had reference, he said, to the Chateau d'Uzerche, orto something that has been found there. To tell the truth, I wasthinking of something else when he told me."
"Dearest," I said, some minutes later, my arm about her waist, "youremember my telling you I had taken a few of the coins I found in yourfather's house. Well, yesterday I had t
hem tested. They are notcounterfeits. They are genuine."
She looked at me curiously. Then, after a pause, she said--
"What made you think they might be counterfeit?"
"What made me think so? Seeing that I discovered with them a number ofimplements, etc, used apparently in the manufacture of base coin, myinference naturally was that the coins must have been false."
Still she looked at me. Gradually her expression hardened.
"Dick," she said at last, "you are deceiving me. You have deceived meall along. You told me you knew my father's secret. Now you don't knowit--do you?"
"Indeed you are mistaken, quite mistaken, dearest," I exclaimed quickly."I know it well enough, but I don't, I admit, know that part of itwhich bears upon these coins. I never pretended to know that part."
It was a wild shot, but I felt I must say something in my defence.
I hated deceiving Vera in this way, as, indeed, I should have hated todeceive her in any way, but, playing a part still, I was driven tosubterfuge. After all, I had never said I knew her father's secret.She had jumped to the conclusion that I knew it, that day I had foundher locked in the upper room in the house in Belgrave Street, and I hadnot disillusioned her. That was all.
The door of the sitting-room opened at that moment, we sprang apart asFaulkner and Violet entered. The pretty girl, in a blue serge coat andskirt, looked radiantly happy, and the happiness she felt seemed toincrease her great beauty. I confess I had not before fully realisedwhat a lovely girl she was.
"Ah, Dick, my dear fellow," Faulkner exclaimed, grasping me by the hand,"I want you to congratulate me, old chap."
"Oh, I do, of course," I said at once. "I congratulate you doubly--onbecoming
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