The Hand of Fear

by Gerald Verner

  Farringdon came to his side and looked down into the deep basin. From where he stood was a sheer drop, broken here and there with large boulders and clumps of shrubbery. At the bottom, nearly a hundred feet below, he could see some lines of trolley rails, red with rust and broken in many places that disappeared into the dark mouth of a cave-like opening that ran into the hillside. The floor of the place was overgrown with weeds and thistles.

  ‘It looks almost inaccessible,’ he commented, and the inspector grinned.

  ‘It would be if it wasn’t for that,’ he replied, pointing to the left.

  Following the direction of his finger, Farringdon saw that a crazy staircase of ladders lashed together had been fixed down the wall of the precipice.

  ‘What’s that for?’ he asked, for the moment puzzled, and his companion explained.

  ‘The ninth hole of the course is close to here,’ he said, ‘and, you see, occasionally bad players have driven their balls into the quarry, so this ladder was fixed so that they could get them back again.’

  ‘It doesn’t look very safe,’ said the reporter.

  ‘I don’t think it’s used very much,’ replied the other. ‘Most of the people of the valley would rather lose a ball than go down. The caddies do sometimes — it generally means a good tip.’

  ‘Well, we’ll emulate the caddies,’ remarked Farringdon, and he moved on towards the crazy structure with the inspector following doubtfully. The ladder swayed unpleasantly as he gingerly descended, but it held, and presently he looked up from firm ground. ‘You needn’t come down if you don’t like the look of it,’ he called, and the inspector evidently took this as a reflection on his courage, for without troubling to answer he swung himself over the edge and began the descent.

  ‘Now,’ said Farringdon, when the other was standing panting by his side, ‘there seem to be several caves and such-like places in the walls of this quarry, but that big one over there looks the most promising so I think we’ll try it first.’

  ‘The place is honeycombed with ’em,’ said the inspector. ‘Goodness knows how many accidents there’d be if it was public property. Luckily it belongs to the estate, so nobody except the residents ever come here.’

  ‘An ideal spot for keeping a man a prisoner,’ murmured the reporter. ‘Provided he was well secured he might stop here for years without being dis —’

  ‘Look out!’ roared the inspector suddenly, and gripping Farringdon by the arm pulled him away.

  There was a slithering, crashing sound and a huge boulder shattered to fragments on the exact spot where they had been standing.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Farringdon. ‘That’s deuced dangerous.’

  ‘It’d be dangerous enough if it had been an accident,’ said the inspector grimly, ‘but it wasn’t!’

  Farringdon’s eyes narrowed. ‘You mean —’ he began.

  ‘There’s a man up there who doesn’t appear to like us,’ was the reply. ‘I saw his head for an instant a second after he’d pushed that thing over the edge!’

  Chapter Nine – Felix Dexon’s Prison

  ‘I suppose you couldn’t tell me who it was?’ said Farringdon, and the inspector shook his head.

  ‘No,’ he replied. ‘I only caught a moment’s look at him, and against the sky you couldn’t see any face at all — nothing but a black blob. I don’t know what made me look up but I am very glad I did.’

  ‘So am I,’ declared the reporter truthfully. ‘Well, it’s useless our going up to look for him. By the time we’d got up the ladder he’d be miles away, apart from the fact that if he happens to be armed we should offer him a particularly easy target. Whoever he is, he certainly doesn’t let any grass grow under his feet.’

  The inspector looked at him curiously. ‘Seems to me,’ he said after a pause, during which the reporter moved over to a less dangerous spot in case the unknown assailant was still about and decided to try any more stone-dropping, ‘that there’s a lot more attaching to this business than I know about.’

  ‘There is,’ agreed Farringdon. ‘As a matter of fact it’s a very complicated job.’ He thought for a moment. After his first not unnatural gruffness, which was understandable in the circumstances, the local man had proved to be a very decent fellow, and the reporter decided to tell him the whole story. His help would probably be useful in the future.

  He listened with interest while Farringdon briefly and concisely told him all he knew, and when he had finished his lips puckered up into a whistle. ‘My gosh!’ he exclaimed, ‘it’s a big thing. Have you any idea who the people are at the bottom of it?’

  ‘No.’ Farringdon shook his head. ‘But I think it’s fairly obvious it must be somebody among those who were in the hall at Feldon’s house when Dexon was killed.’

  ‘I suppose the Yard’ll come into it,’ grunted the inspector. ‘It looks to me as though the same person who killed that fellow Lew Miller was responsible for these other murders.’

  ‘I think it’s almost certain,’ answered Farringdon. ‘Though what the motive could have been in Miller’s case, I don’t know.’

  ‘Perhaps the same as it was in Feldon’s case,’ suggested the inspector. ‘Perhaps he knew too much.’

  ‘That may be it,’ agreed the reporter. ‘He was looking for a man called Sam Gates, wasn’t he?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said the inspector.

  ‘Then it’s ten chances to one,’ said Farringdon, ‘that this man Gates is the man we want.’

  ‘There isn’t anyone of that name in Deneswood Valley,’ objected the local man.

  ‘Not of that name,’ said Farringdon quickly. ‘But it may not be his name — now. You see what I mean? Miller had been in prison. He’d only recently come out when he was killed. Supposing he’d known this man Gates prior to his sentence and tried to find him when he came out. Supposing that he discovered that his friend Gates was living at Deneswood Valley and came to try and get some money out of him — perhaps by blackmail. He asks Blessington, but he doesn’t know anybody of the name and Miller goes away. Later he comes back and probably accidentally sees the man he’s searching for. He threatens him, and Gates makes an appointment to see him later that night — probably promises him money to keep his mouth shut — and when he comes, kills him. It all fits in.’

  ‘Yes, it all fits in,’ agreed the inspector. ‘You mean this man Gates is the feller behind this other business.’

  ‘I should think it was more than likely,’ said Farringdon.

  They had been walking towards the entrance of the tunnel-like aperture while talking, and now the reporter came to a halt and stared into the gloom. The daylight only penetrated for a few yards and then it became as black as a coal cellar. He felt in his pocket for the electric torch he always carried. ‘How far does this extend into the hillside?’ he asked.

  The inspector shook his head. ‘I don’t know,’ he replied. ‘I’ve heard that it goes a goodish way, but I’ve never been here before myself, so I couldn’t say.’

  Farringdon pressed the button of his lamp and directed a ray of light into the blackness. ‘Well, we’ll do a little exploring,’ he said. ‘Come —’ He paused. Glancing down, he saw that the ground here was inches deep in white limestone dust, and in the dust were the marks of feet. ‘These ought to help us,’ he said, ‘if this dust extends any distance inside. These footprints must have been made by Dexon when he escaped — they are all pointing towards the entrance, there are none going in. This is a bit of luck. It’s going to save us a lot of time.’

  Stepping carefully so as to avoid obliterating the prints, they entered the tunnel. The footsteps were plainly visible, and Farringdon kept the beam of his light directed downwards. ‘There have been other people here as well,’ he said. ‘Look — you can see other prints going and coming, underneath those of Dexon’s, and — yes, by Jove! Look here!’ He bent down and pointed to a particularly clear mark. ‘The fellow with the broad-toed shoe has been here. These are the same marks as we found on
the settee and in Feldon’s garden.’

  The low-roofed gallery went on straight for about a hundred yards and then it branched into two, one going right and the other left. The footprints turned into the right-hand arm and they followed them. This tunnel started the same size as the main gallery, but as they advanced it got narrower and narrower, and the roof sloped downwards until they were compelled to stoop almost double to avoid bumping their heads.

  ‘We shan’t be able to go much further,’ gasped the inspector, red-faced from the cramped position he was forced to adopt.

  ‘We shan’t need to,’ said Farringdon. He played the light of his torch on a narrow opening in the rough wall on their left. ‘The footsteps go in here.’

  They passed through the slit — it was little more — and found themselves in a small square chamber that had been hewn out of the soft stone. It was roughly square, and in one corner lay a pile of dirty rags.

  ‘Dexon’s home!’ remarked Farringdon grimly.

  There was an upturned box in the centre and on this stood a mug of water and a dirty plate. In one corner lay a pile of empty food tins. The whole place was indescribably dirty and smelt musty and fetid.

  ‘Good God! Surely they didn’t keep him here?’ cried the inspector. ‘Why, it’s not fit for an animal!’

  The reporter’s face was very stern. ‘They did,’ he said. ‘This place was Felix Dexon’s home for nearly two years, I’ll bet.’ He pointed to the wall beside the heap of rags. ‘Look! See that ragged hole? That’s where the staple was fixed to which he was chained. I suppose they didn’t think he’d have the strength to pull it out, or else they didn’t take into account the softness of this stone.’ He peered about the place, turning over the bedding and looking behind the tins. In a niche, scooped out of the wall, the inspector discovered a writing-pad and a bottle of ink, and with it a pen.

  ‘That’s what they forced him to sign his cheques with,’ commented the reporter, ‘and on that paper he wrote his notes.’ He remembered the scars on the emaciated man’s arms and shivered inwardly. What hellish torture had been inflicted on Felix Dexon in order to make him sign those cheques and write those letters?

  His mind turned to Lesley Thane, and as he thought of her he started. She was Dexon’s only living relative. His death meant that she was his heiress. Unless he had made a will leaving his money elsewhere, she would inherit the income that the bank people had been paying out with such monotonous regularity. It was very doubtful if he had made a will. This thought led to another. Dexon’s escape and his death would be disastrous to the people who had been drawing his income. Directly the murder became public property, as it must do, the lawyers would take steps to see that the banks stopped further payments, and having gone to such a vast amount of trouble to secure the control of Dexon’s money, the people behind this ghastly business were not likely to allow it to slip from their grasp so easily. They would make an attempt to keep that income, and the only way they could do that was through Lesley Thane. The girl had been in danger before, but now that Dexon was dead she was in a hundred times worse danger.

  Farringdon continued to help the inspector in his search with his mind full of the possibilities that this fresh aspect had conjured up. The cell-like room was not very large and it didn’t take them long to complete a thorough examination. When they had finished the inspector shook his head.

  ‘There’s nothing here,’ he said. ‘We may as well get back.’

  ‘What do you propose doing next?’ asked Farringdon as they crawled through the narrow opening.

  ‘I’m going back to Feldon’s house,’ said the inspector. ‘I want to get all the fingerprints of the people who were in the hall when Dexon was shot, and I also want to make another search for the weapon. It wasn’t on any of those people so it must be somewhere. The only place I can think of where it was hidden, is in the hall —’

  Bang!

  The end of his sentence was drowned in a thunderous report.

  Bang! Bang!

  It was followed by two more in rapid succession. Farringdon saw three vicious stabs of orange flame pierce the darkness ahead, and switching out his torch flung himself flat on his face. ‘Get down!’ he hissed, and then his eyes and mouth became full of dust as a fourth bullet struck the wall within an inch of his face!

  Chapter Ten – The Fingerprint

  It was a perilous position, lying there in the narrow confines of the passage with someone in front blazing away at them. It seemed impossible that he could fail to miss them, but curiously enough after the fourth shot there came no more. In the silence that followed the last reverberating echo, Farringdon heard a muttered curse, and his quick brain supplied the reason and also why there were no more shots. The man in the dark had been using an automatic and the mechanism had jammed. There came the sound of rapid stumbling footsteps retreating quickly, and the reporter nudged the inspector. ‘Something’s gone wrong with his gun,’ he whispered. ‘Come on, we may get him!’

  They hurried forward as fast as they could, but it was difficult to move quickly, crouched up as they had been, and by the time they emerged into the light there was nobody in sight.

  ‘He only came as far as the branched passages,’ said the inspector. ‘You can see his marks in the dust.’ He looked closely at the ground and pointed. ‘You see,’ he went on, ‘it was the same man who killed Feldon.’

  ‘He must have moved pretty quickly,’ grunted the reporter. ‘He couldn’t have reached that ladder and gone up in the time, surely?’

  The inspector shook his head. ‘No, he’s still somewhere about in the quarry,’ he answered. ‘We’ll have a look around. With his gun out of action he’s fairly helpless, and we might get him.’

  They set about methodically searching every hiding-place, but there was no sign of the killer and eventually they gave it up.

  ‘Wherever he’s vanished to, he’s done it pretty thoroughly,’ remarked Farringdon as they made their way towards the ladder. ‘Of course, he may have slipped into any one of those caves — probably knows the place inside out — and we can’t search all of them. The place is like a rabbit warren; it would take a dozen men all day to search it thoroughly.’

  The inspector agreed, and they ascended the crazy ladder. The man who lay on the narrow ledge halfway up the hillside, concealed by a thick clump of bushes, watched them go with malignant eyes and cursed the useless pistol in his pocket.

  The constable who had been left in charge had nothing to report when they got back to Feldon’s house. With the help of this man, the inspector went off to make a fresh search for the weapon that had killed Felix Dexon, leaving Farringdon to his own devices.

  The reporter decided to have another look round the dead man’s study, and entering the long room made a second examination of the desk in the hope that he might find something that had been overlooked on the previous search. He looked carefully for secret drawers, but there were none — at least none that he could discover. He was anxious as soon as possible to get through to the Morning Herald to report the two murders, and was rather surprised that the inspector had not prohibited any such action.

  Turning away from the desk, he caught sight of the carved cabinet and saw that the door was ajar. Going over, he pulled it open and discovered that it concealed a safe, the door of which was also partly open. From the lock hung a bunch of keys, and pulling the door wide he inspected the safe’s interior. If it had ever contained anything, the killer of Feldon had taken the contents with him, for it was now empty.

  He was crossing to the door to notify the inspector of his find when that official came quickly into the room. He carried in his hand a revolver, attached to the barrel of which was a long cylinder. ‘This is the weapon that killed Dexon,’ said the inspector. ‘We found it on top of the clock in the hall. The murderer must have put it there immediately after committing the crime.’ He spun the cylinders and grunted. ‘Two shots have been fired from this,’ he announced, ‘so I should th
ink it was also the weapon that killed Feldon.’

  Farringdon nodded. ‘That’s why nobody heard the shot,’ he said. ‘He used a revolver for that reason. You can’t attach a silencer to an automatic pistol.’

  The inspector was handling the weapon carefully with a handkerchief, and now he wrapped it up and thrust it in his pocket. ‘Maybe there are prints on it that will be useful,’ he said. ‘So far as I remember, none of the people present were wearing gloves, and the man who fired this has probably left his mark.’

  Farringdon told him about the empty safe, and he pursed his lips.

  ‘Looks as though there was something in that safe that might have given him away,’ he remarked. ‘Well, whatever it was he’s got it so it doesn’t help us much. I’m going along to get these people’s fingerprints and have this gun dusted. If this fellow Sam Gates is at the bottom of the business, as you suggest, and was friendly with Lew Miller, it’s ten chances to one that they’ve got a record at the Yard. If one of the people who were in the hall tonight when Dexon was killed is Sam Gates, his fingerprints should give him away. I’ll send them up to the Yard —’

  ‘Why not let me take them?’ suggested Farringdon. ‘I’m going back to London almost directly. It’ll save time.’

  The inspector was a little dubious. He was not quite certain how his superiors would view his making use of the assistance of a newspaper reporter, but Farringdon overruled his objections and it was arranged that he should call with the prints at the little hotel where Farringdon had left his car.

  He went off on his errand and the reporter made his way back to the inn. The first thing he did was to order breakfast from a surprised and sleepy-eyed servant, and the second was to put through a call to the offices of the Morning Herald. Mr. Ebbs had not yet arrived, but Farringdon was lucky to catch the night editor just as he was leaving, and to that interested man he gave a rapid account of the events of the night.