From above the low voice spoke again.
“Come, Martin. You’ll soon know now. You’ll remember just what you did, and how you did it – between the doors.”
There was something terrible about the soft voice, and Martin Mallowood panted, his laboured breath sounding loud as he went upstairs, followed by the other silent mover.
At the top of the stairs the corridor was in absolute darkness. Martin turned to the left, towards the west end of the house where Paul Mallowood had slept, and the voice sounded in front of him, soft and mocking, “You know the way, don’t you? I’m here, Martin.”
Along the corridor Martin Mallowood shuffled, dragging his feet as a lame man does. He had put out his hand against the panelling to guide him, and the sound of his movement came as a dragging slurring rhythm. He walked to the end of the corridor and then turned right, until he found the open door of the oriel room, next to the bedroom where Paul had slept on his last night at Wulfstane. There was the faintest glow of light here, a pale luminosity which shone from the open connecting-door between the two bedrooms. Martin shuffled up to the door, and then there was a sudden thud, as he was pitched forwards. His voice rang out, suddenly loud and clear.
“It’s not Paul. It’s not Paul! God, I remember now! It wasn’t Paul!”
His cry died away as the door was slammed on him. Between the two doors he still shouted, his voice faint and muffed, hardly audible between the heavy doors. “It wasn’t Paul, I tell you, it wasn’t Paul!”
In the darkness of the oriel room a man chuckled – a grim, horrible sound. He had turned the key in the lock after he had shut Martin in between the two doors, and he stood for a second in the darkness. Then a voice sounded from the stairs.
“Here, Ronnie. It’s all right. I heard something queer up here.”
The speaker who had enticed Martin up the stairs had now subtly altered his voice – and the alteration was noted by the man who had hidden behind the curtains in the hall. It was extraordinarily like Martin’s voice speaking now, a deep voice, but hesitant, with a little stutter in it. The speaker went forward in the darkness, passed the unseen watcher outside the door, so close that he almost touched him and went on towards the stair head.
“There’s someone up here, Ronnie,” he went on, his voice quavering as though with fear.
Down below in the hall three candles flickered, and the log fire blazed. It was dark in the corridor, but any one standing at the stair head was visible against the faint light far below. The watcher in the blackness of the corridor could see the man who spoke and could see the gleam of something he held in his hand. In that tense second, when the watcher poised for a spring, one of the old boards creaked under his weight, and the crack of the shifting board sounded as loud as a shot in the silence. If the watcher had shouted aloud he could not have proclaimed his presence more clearly.
“God! There is someone up here…” The words were gasped out as the speaker sprang sideways, and a spurt of flame rent the darkness for a split second as a pistol barked.
Veronica’s deep voice cried out in a passionate call of fear as she rushed for the stairs.
“Martin, Martin, where are you?”
There was a rush of running footsteps and a mocking voice called back:
“It’s Paul. I’ve come back, I tell you! I’ve come back!”
When Macdonald had hidden behind the curtains in the great hall, he had had no idea what was to be the outcome of his vigil. He had not expected that Martin Mallowood would venture into the open in his silent home. Event had followed hard on the heel of event – and a creaking board had given away the detective’s presence when his hand was actually stretched out to seize his man. As the speaker rushed away down the corridor towards the east end of the house, Macdonald shouted:
“Martin’s locked between the doors. Go and let him out!”
Into the detective’s mind as he raced down the corridor after the fugitive flashed a sudden fear. If he were laid out, and Veronica rendered helpless, Martin would be helpless too, locked in that dark narrow space, until kind oblivion should overtake him.
Even as he ran, Macdonald’s ears strained to hear the movements of the man in front of him: the C.I.D. man realised the very second that the other paused, and he flattened himself against the panelling to avoid the shot which came down the corridor.
This was a mad business indeed, thought Macdonald. Were he himself killed, the shooting might well be put to Martin’s account. A second later, the fugitive had taken to his heels again: eastwards down the corridor he ran, turning by the baize door which led to the servants’ quarters and service staircase. Here he paused, and shouted aloud to the shadows:
“I’m Paul Mallowood! I’ve come back again, Veronica! I told you I should come back!”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
WHEN Macdonald had made his way into Wulfstane Manor shortly before midnight, he had not done so without a definite plan. Peter Vernon had complained that the C.I.D. men stationed in the park were useless from the point of view of keeping the house under observation. Macdonald was fully aware of that fact. He had stationed his men at a distance from the house, and given them a definite beat to patrol because he had intended that they should be noticed on that particular beat. There was one exit from certain ruined vaults which had been part of Wulfstane Abbey crypt when the Abbey was in being. It seemed to Macdonald very improbable that the half-ruined entrance he had observed still connected with the cellars of the manor house, but he set his men to watch it, his intention being to give the impression that the watch was concentrating on a beat well away from the house. In other words, he hoped that Veronica would observe the “boy scout” tactics of the C.I.D. men, and would laugh to herself over it.
Until the evening, when he made his own entrance, Macdonald had left the interior of the house severely alone. He wanted to breed confidence in the inmates – whatever inmates might still be living in the vast, intricate building. One man only had been entrusted with the task of examining the exterior of the building. This was a man named Beding, generally employed on “special work.” Beding had studied architecture and archaeology, and he knew more about ancient English houses than any man in England in Macdonald”s opinion. Much of his work was done in libraries. He had a reader’s ticket for both the British Museum and the Bodleian libraries, and he could unearth ancient books which gave him information which might have surprised the owners of certain old houses. Beding knew that all houses of the age and architectural interest of Wulfstane were documented, if you only knew how to get at the sources of the commentator’s work, and at Macdonald’s request Beding had spent some days disinterring facts about Wulfstane from long forgotten volumes, hidden in the vaults of the great libraries.
When Macdonald determined to hazard his own secret search in the Manor, he had two men posted outside at the east end of the building. One was Beding himself, and one was Detective Reeves – the latter useful for his faculty of being able to see like a cat in the dimness of a cloudy night, and for his ability – also cat-like – to move without a sound. These two men took up their post in an unexpected place – actually within the walls of the kitchen garden. Beding had worked out the most possible secret exit from the cellars of Wulfstane, and this connected with a tunnel in which the heating flues ran up to the great glass houses above ground. When the kitchen garden had been laid out and “walled” in the time of William and Mary, the tunnel which connected with the vaults had been used for storage.
At a later period, when the greenhouses were built, and heating installed in them, use had been made of the tunnel for the passage of heating pipes. It was some years now since the greenhouses had been heated: they were a luxury which Veronica had dispensed with as increasing taxation and a diminishing income had driven her to curtail expenses. Higgins, the gardener, used one small house for his seedlings, but the range of three great houses, including the winery, were now to all intents and purposes derelict, for one gardener coul
d not attempt the work they involved, even though there had been money for their upkeep.
It was Beding who, through study of old architectural treatises, had discovered where the tunnel lay, and the secret of its unexpected exit. When he and Reeves first approached the great walled garden they had found its doorway securely padlocked, and Reeves had oiled and picked the lock with silent skill and swiftness.
It was just before eleven o’clock that the two men, silent as shadows, had entered the walled garden and found their way to the brick-lined pit where the disused furnace was installed. It was quite dark down there, and Reeves had produced a tiny torch, whose beam shone through a mere slit in its casing, and worked it along the brick walls until he found the low tunnel which enclosed the pipes. Beding gave a grunt of assent, and went down on all fours on the ground and proceeded to insinuate himself into the narrow arched space. Reeves waited for a while, his lively mind considering the prospect with distaste, for he hated tunnels, and this one was only just wide enough for a man to work his body along the ground, snail-wise. A note like that of a startled owl gave him the signal to proceed, and he followed Beding’s mode of progression below the arch, crawling along the dusty cindery floor. He had only crawled thus a few yards when his outstretched hand felt a step downwards in the tunnel floor, and Beding’s whisper reached him, “Ten steps down. You can stand at the bottom.”
Reeves heaved a sigh of relief when he was able to stand upright again: he felt ready to cope with any excitements now that he had the free use of his limbs again, but he had hated the confined space of the tunnel, and the sense that his arms were pinioned and helpless.
“There’s a doorway in,front here: see what you can make of it. If it’s bolted we might as well go back and wait in furnace pit. If you can open it we’ll go on,” whispered Beding.
Reeves set to work with his pick-lock tools, working cautiously in the darkness after a brief inspection of the big keyhole. He was intent on working silently, and all his faculties were concentrated on feeling for the spring of the lock, as his fingers worked his skeleton key a little in and a little out, seeking for the point at which the cunning wards would grip. After a few minutes his fingers felt the spring pressing against the lever he held, and with a sharp click the lock sprang back and the door swung on its hinges.
Again Boding took the lead, and Reeves waited until the signal came for him to move on. A whispered message reached him in the darkness:
“Put your hands on my shoulder. Twenty steps forward and then turn right. That will bring us under the house somewhere near the kitchens of the east wing.”
As he went forward again in the darkness, his arm outstretched so that his hand rested on Beding’s shoulder, Reeves realised how much his own faculties depended on eyesight. Outside, under the gloom of the night sky, he had been able to see easily enough, the world about him a series of grey tones, colourless but visible. Down here in the vaulted passage, where light was totally excluded, he could of course see nothing at all, and the effect was to make him lose his sense of direction. He had no idea which way he was facing, and distances seemed falsified. He counted out twenty steps, but he seemed to have traversed an unreasonably long distance before the count was complete.
“Wait here and listen,” Beding whispered to him. Reeves heard the other move a little, and the sound came of something hard touching the stone wall. Beding was applying a microphone, a tiny instrument made for the detection of sound travelling through walls or floor. The two men stood immobile, in absolute silence, for several minutes, and then Beding said:
“I’m pretty certain there’s no one down here. The passage forks here. There’s one tunnel running due west – that’ll be under the terrace on the south front – the other turns north a bit, further under the house. If you’ll stay here, I’ll go and explore the west bit. Don’t move and don’t show a light. There are steps down on your right. If anybody comes from the direction of the house you’ll hear them easily enough.”
He moved away, and though Reeves strained his ears he could not hear a sound of the other’s footsteps. In his soft soled shoes, without the aid of any light, Beding went down the stone-flagged passage absolutely silently.
Reeves leant his shoulders against the stone wall and waited patiently in the darkness. He could hear nothing. He could see nothing, and it was well for him that hey had a detective’s training in patience. The time seemed interminable, the lack of action intolerable in the silent darkness. The first he knew of Beding’s return was the other’s whisper close beside him, “Somebody’s been using the cellars as a hidey-hole all right. There’s bedding down there, and some books. There’s an air shaft leading up somewhere, because I could feel the draught, and there’s a well in the floor. That pretty well dates it – early medieval. There’s nobody there now; though. We might as well go on and get a bit closer under the house. A. light won’t do any harm if you keep it turned down.”
The tiny glimmer from Reeves’ torch illumined only the stone floor and the worn stone steps which led down another six feet into a square vaulted apartment. In the farther wall of this small chamber was an arched doorway, set in a deep recess. This proved to be unlocked, and Reeves put gut his torch while Beding listened with his sound detector.
“Not a sound,” he breathed. “This one leads into the cellars under the east wing. I reckon the chap’s gone up into the house, seeing he’s left this door open… Hallo,… what’s that?”
“That” was a muffled report, sounding from the far distance. It was not loud, but to Reeves’ trained ears the brief “thud” had only one meaning – a shot. His faculties intensely alert, he whispered “Gun shot. The chief’s started a hare. Which is the way into the house? That door? That’ll be the bolt-hole.”
In the darkness, Reeves moved across to the door and found it swung open to his hand. As he stood there another report sounded from above, a little clearer than the last, but still a long way away. Reeves flicked on his torch for a split second and saw a flight of stone steps leading upwards. This flight must connect up with one of the rooms in the east wing, he reckoned.
He whispered to Beding, “If any one does a bolt this way, they’ll likely come down those steps – and they’ve got a gun by the sound of things. It looks like being lively. Stand well against the wall at the bottom there. I’ll try to collar him at the top of the steps.”
Softly he crept up the stone steps, and even as he mounted he heard sounds from above – somebody running. He had no time to find out if the door at the top of the steps opened inwards towards him, because the running footsteps were swiftly drawing nearer. With instinctive caution Reeves withdrew a little lower, two steps down, lest the door be hurled open in his face and he be flung backwards down the steps. He had a second to brace himself as he realised that the runner was at the door – and then a man’s body met his own, driving at him with the impact of a runner descending.
Reeves gripped the other and flung his own weight forwards, against the stone wall on the opposite side of the steps. He was gripped in turn, and heard his captive cursing for one breathless second, and then the two went headlong down the flight together, locked in a mad clutch as they hurtled downwards. Somebody cried out as they thudded on the stone floor at the bottom – not Reeves, not the man he still held, but the unfortunate Beding, who had been brought down by the impact of the others.
Reeves felt the powerful heave of his captive’s limbs jerking wildly to get free: he heard a report like thunder and felt the hot blast of a pistol which went off a yard from his own face, reached out to grip the hand which held the weapon and was deafened again by a shot which struck the stone wall and ricochetted back against the steps. In that mad moment of physical endeavour the wiry detective clutched ever closer to the man on the floor. Keep close enough to him and he was less likely to stop a bullet. The last shots from the six-shooter roared out, and still Reeves held on. The other man, with astounding strength, heaved himself sideways and forced himsel
f up, Reeves hanging on like a bulldog. Still clinching, the two somehow staggered up, swayed together for a dizzy second and then went down again as they fouled Beding’s feet. Reeves was undermost this time. His head hit the stone wall and his grip relaxed for a second, and the other tore himself free. In that dizzy sickening moment of semi-consciousness Reeves was aware for a brief second of bitter disappointment. He’d mucked it… Let the blighter go… a blaze of light flashed across his vision before oblivion shut down on him for a while.
***
When Macdonald had heard the shout from the baize door on the first floor he had paused a second.
The words echoed back along the panelled corridor: “I’m Paul Mallowood! I’ve come back again!”
The great deep voice sounded mad – mad, mocking and defiant, as though the ghosts of all the wild Mallowoods were reincarnated in that challenging shout. Then came the slap-slap of running footsteps again, creaking boards, the old house cracking and groaning as ancient stairs told the tale of their running burden. Macdonald followed, through the baize door, down the worn twisting stairs, through another door, striving to keep a sense of direction as he pursued. He could still hear the running footsteps: knew when the wooden floors beneath those feet changed to stone flags: he felt the chill of the stone rising about him as he made his way through the kitchens, felt the draught of air when a swing door was flung open and to again, and somehow found his own way in the darkness to the service door which connected with the dining-room. He knew which way they were going now – to the east wing and the cellars. The fugitive knew his own way well, and Macdonald marvelled that the other did not stop to lack a door which would have impeded the pursuit.
Rope's End, Rogue's End Page 19
