“But we saw him enter at a quarter past ten.”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“He is not here now.”
“He could not have gone, for the house has been surrounded.”
Again she gave her shoulders a shrug. “You have your warrant, gentlemen,” she said; “you can look for yourselves.”
Frost came up to her.
“I regret to say, madam, that you, this gentleman, and all your servants must consider yourselves under arrest until we find Mr. Oscar Digby.”
“That will be forever, then,” she replied: “but please yourselves.”
My heart beat with an unwonted sense of terror. What could the woman mean? Digby, either dead or alive, must be in the house.
The operations which followed were conducted rapidly. The establishment, consisting of Mrs. Scaiffe, her brother, two Spanish men-servants, two maids, one of Spanish extraction, and the negro who had opened the door to us, were summoned and placed in the charge of a police-sergeant.
Muriel Scaiffe was nowhere to be seen.
Then our search of the house began. The rooms on the ground-floor, consisting of the drawing-room, dining room, and two other big rooms, were fitted up in quite an everyday manner. We did not take much time going through them.
In the basement, the large cellar which had attracted Mrs. Scaiffe is pleased surprise on the day when I took her to see The Rosary had now been fitted up as a laboratory. I gazed at it in astonishment. It was evidently intended for the manufacture of chemicals on an almost commercial scale. All the latest chemical and electrical apparatus were to be found there, as well as several large machines, the purpose of which were not evident. One in particular I specially noticed. It was a big tank with complicated equipment for the manufacture of liquid air in large quantities.
We had no time to give many thoughts to the laboratory just then. A foreboding sense of ever-increasing fear was upon each and all of us. It was sufficient to see that Digby was not there.
Our search in the upper regions was equally unsuccessful. We were just going down stairs again when Frost drew my attention to a door which we had not yet opened. We went to it and found it locked. Putting our strength to work, Garland and I between us burst it open. Within, we found a girl crouching by the bed. She was only partly dressed, and her head was buried in her hands. We went up to her. She turned, saw my face, and suddenly clung to me.
“Have you found him? Is he safe?”
“I do not know, my dear,” I answered, trying to soothe her. “We are looking for him. God grant us success.”
“Did he come to the house? I have been locked in here all day and heavily drugged. I have only just recovered consciousness and scarcely know what I am doing. Is he in the house?”
“He came in. We are searching for him; we hope to find him.”
“That you will never do!” She gave a piercing cry and fell unconscious on the floor.
We placed the unhappy girl on the bed. Garland produced brandy and gave her a few drops; she came to in a couple of minutes and began to moan feebly. We left her, promising to return. We had no time to attend to her just then.
When we reached the hall Frost stood still.
“The man is not here,” he muttered.
“But he is here,” was Garland’s incisive answer. “Inspector, you have got to tear the place to pieces.”
The latter nodded.
The inspector’s orders were given rapidly, and dawn was just breaking when ten policemen, ordered in from outside, began their systematic search of the entire house from roof to basement.
Pick and crowbar were ruthlessly applied, and never have I seen a house in such a mess. Floorings were torn up and rafters cut through. Broken plaster littered the rooms and lay about on the sumptuous furniture. Walls were pierced and bored through. Closets and cupboards were ransacked. The backs of the fireplaces were torn out and the chimneys explored.
Very little was said as our investigation proceeded, and room after room was checked off.
Finally, an exhaustive examination of the basement and cellars completed our search.
“Well, Dr. Garland, are you satisfied?” asked the inspector.
We had gone back to the garden, and Garland was leaning against a tree, his hands thrust in his pockets and his eyes fixed on the ground. Frost pulled his long moustache and breathed quickly.
“Are you satisfied?” he repeated.
“We must talk sense or we shall all go mad, “ was Garland’s answer. “The thing is absurd, you know. Men don’t disappear. Let us work this thing out logically. There are only three planes in space and we know matter is indestructible. If Digby left this house he went up, down, or horizontally. Up is out of the question. If he disappeared in a balloon or was shot off the roof he must have been seen by us, for the house was surrounded. He certainly did not pass through the cordon of men. He did not go down, for every cubic foot of basement and cellar has been accounted for, as well as every cubic foot of space in the house.
“So we come to the chemical change of matter, dissipation into gas by heat. There are no furnaces, no ashes, no gas cylinders, nor dynamos, nor carbon points. The time when we lost sight of him to the time of entrance was exactly two hours and three-quarters. There is no way out of it. He is still there.”
“He is not there,” was the quiet retort of the inspector. “I have sent for the Assistant Commissioner to Scotland Yard, and will ask him to take over the case. It is too much for me.”
The tension in all our minds had now reached such a state of strain that we began to fear our own shadows.
Oscar Digby, standing, as it were, on the threshold of a very great future, the hero of a legend worthy of old romance, has suddenly and inexplicably vanished. I could not get my reason to believe that he was not still in the house, for there was not the least doubt that he had not come out. What would happen in the next few hours?
“Is there no secret chamber or secret passage that we have overlooked?” I said, turning to the inspector.
“The walls have been tapped.” he replied. “There is not the slightest indication of a hollow. There are no underground passages. The man is not within these walls.”
He now spoke with a certain degree of irritation in his voice which the mystery of the case had evidently awakened in his mind. A few moments later the sound of approaching wheels caused us to turn our heads. A cab drew up at the gates, out of which alighted the well-known form of Sir George Freer.
Garland had already entered the house, and on Sir George appearing on the scene he and I followed him.
We had just advanced across the hall to the room where the members of the household, with the exception of poor Muriel Scaiffe, were still detained, when, to our utter amazement, a long, strange peal of laughter sounded from below. This was followed by another, and again by another. The laughter came from the lips of Garland. We glanced at each other. What on earth did it mean? Together we darted down the stone steps, but before we reached the laboratory another laugh rang out. All hope in me was suddenly changed to a chilling fear, for the laugh was not natural. It had a changing, metallic sound, without any mirth.
In the center of the room stood Garland. His mouth was twitching and his breath jerked in and out convulsively.
“What is it? What is the matter?” I cried.
He made no reply, but, pointing to a machine with steel blocks, once more broke into a choking, gurgling laugh which made my flesh creep.
Had he gone mad? Sir George moved swiftly across to him and laid his hand on his shoulder.
“Come, what is all this, Garland?” he said, sternly, though his own face was full of fear.
I knew Garland to be a man of extraordinary self-control, and I could see that he was now holding himself in with all the force at his command.
“It is no use—I cannot tell you,” he burst out.
“What—you know what has become of him?”
“Yes.”
&n
bsp; “You can prove it?”
“Yes.”
“Speak out, man.”
“He is not here,” said Garland.
“Then where is he?”
He flung his hand out towards the Heath, and I saw that the fit was taking him again, but once more he controlled himself. Then he said, in a clear, level voice:
“He is dead, Sir George, and you can never see his body. You cannot hold an inquest, for there is nothing to hold it on. The winds have taken him and scattered him in dust on the Heath. Don’t look at me like that, Pleydell. I am sane, although it is a wonder we are not all mad over this business. Look and listen.”
He pointed to the great metal tank.
“I arrived at my present conclusion by a process of elimination,” he began. “Into that tank which contained liquid air Digby, gagged and bound, must have been placed violently, probably after he had given away the chart. Death would have been instantaneous, and he would have been frozen into complete solidity in something like forty minutes. The ordinary laboratory experiment is to freeze a rabbit, which can then be powdered into mortar like any other friable stone. The operation here has been the same. It is only a question of size. Remember, we are dealing with 12 deg. below zero Fahrenheit, and then, well, look at this and these.”
He pointed to a large machine with steel blocks and to a bench littered with saws, chisels, pestles, and mortars.
“That machine is a stone-breaker,” he said. “On the dust adhering to these blocks I found this.”
He held up a test tube containing a blue liquid.
“The Guiacum test,” he said. “In other words, blood. This fact taken with the facts we already know, that Digby never left the house; that the only other agent of destruction of a body, fire, is out of the question; that this tank is the receptacle of that enormous machine for making liquid air in very large quantities; and, above all, the practical possibility of the operation being conducted by the men who are at present in the house, afford me absolutely conclusive proof beyond a possibility of doubt as to what has happened. The body of that unfortunate man is as if it had never been, without a fragment of pinpoint size for identification or evidence. It is beyond the annals of all the crimes that I have ever heard of. What law can help us? Can you hold an inquest on nothing? Can you charge a person with murder where no victim or trace of a victim can be produced?”
A sickly feeling came over me. Garland’s words carried their own conviction, and we knew that we stood in the presence of a horror with a name. Nevertheless, to the police mind horror per se does not exist. To them there is always a mystery, a crime, and a solution. That is all. The men beside me were police once more. Sentiment might come later.
“Are there any reporters here?” asked Sir George.
“None,” answered Frost.
“Good. Mr. Oscar Digby has disappeared. There is no doubt how. There can, of course, be no arrest, as Dr. Garland has just said. Our official position is this. We suspect that Mr. Digby has been murdered, but the search for the discovery of the body has failed. That is our position.”
Before I left that awful house I made arrangements to have Muriel Scaiffe conveyed to a London hospital. I did not consult Mrs. Scaiffe on the subject. I could not get myself to say another word to the woman. In the hospital a private ward was secured for the unhappy girl, and there for many weeks she hovered between life and death.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Scaiffe and her brother were detained at The Rosary. They were closely watched by the police, and although they made many efforts to escape they found it impossible. Our hope was that when Muriel recovered her strength she would be able to substantiate a case against them. But, alas, this hope was unfounded, for, as the girl recovered, there remained a blank in her memory which no efforts on our part could fill. She had absolutely and completely forgotten Oscar Digby, and the house on Hampstead Heath was to her as though it had never existed. In all other respects she was well. Under these circumstances we were forced to allow the Spaniard and his sister to return to their own country, our one most earnest hope being that we might never see or hear of them again.
Meanwhile, Muriel grew better. I was interested in her from the first. When she was well enough I placed her with some friends of my own. A year ago she became my wife. I think she is happy. A past which is forgotten cannot trouble her. I have long ago come to regard her as the best and truest woman living.
The Invisible Man by G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936)
Essayist, short-story writer, artist, and creator of Father Brown, Gilbert Keith Chesterton was an expert on the impossible crime. He wrote about 25 stories about locked and guarded rooms, winged daggers, haunted castles, deadly curses, and strange vanishings. He loved paradoxes, statements and situations that seem inconsistent and perhaps impossible. Thus the circumstances of a Chestertonian crime may indicate to self-proclaimed modern observers that the supernatural is at work, but to Father Brown, who seems at first glance to be most unmodern, the problem of crime is one of sin and thus it must be human. He explains that “alone on earth, the Church makes reason really supreme. Alone on earth, the Church affirms that God himself is bound by reason.” Chesterton admitted to “no pretensions to the scientific knowledge required to kill people,” and Father Brown’s solution to the problem of an invisible man is not based on H. G. Wellsian (or, for that matter, L. T. Meadeian) scientific speculation but on human perceptions.
IN THE cool blue twilight of two steep streets in Camden Town, the shop at the corner, a confectioner’s, glowed like the butt of a cigar. One should rather say, perhaps, like the butt of a firework, for the light was of many colours and some complexity, broken up by many mirrors and dancing on many gilt and gaily-colored cakes and sweetmeats. Against this one fiery glass were glued the noses of many guttersnipes, for the chocolates were all wrapped in those red and gold and green metallic colours which are almost better than chocolate itself; and the huge white wedding-cake in the window was somehow at once remote and satisfying, just as if the whole North Pole were good to eat. Such rainbow provocations could naturally collect the youth of the neighborhood up to the ages of ten or twelve. But this corner was also attractive to youth at a later stage; and a young man, not less than twenty-four, was staring into the same shop window. To him, also, the shop was of fiery charm, but this attraction was not wholly to be explained by chocolates; which, however, he was far from despising.
He was a tall, burly, red-haired young man, with a resolute face but a listless manner. He carried under his arm a flat, grey portfolio of black-and-white sketches, which he had sold with more or less success to publishers ever since his uncle (who was an admiral) had disinherited him for Socialism, because of a lecture which he had delivered against that economic theory. His name was John Turnbull Angus.
Entering at last, he walked through the confectioner’s shop to the back room, which was a sort of pastry-cook restaurant, merely raising his hat to the young lady who was serving there. She was a dark, elegant, alert girl in black, with a high color and very quick, dark eyes; and after the ordinary interval she followed him into the inner room to take his order.
His order was evidently a usual one. “I want, please,” he said with precision, “one halfpenny bun and a small cup of black coffee.” An instant before the girl could turn away he added, “Also, I want you to marry me.”
The young lady of the shop stiffened suddenly and said, “Those are jokes I don’t allow.”
The red-haired young man lifted grey eyes of an unexpected gravity.
“Really and truly,” he said, “it’s as serious—as serious as the halfpenny bun. It is expensive, like the bun; one pays for it. It is indigestible, like the bun. It hurts.”
The dark young lady had never taken her dark eyes off him, but seemed to be studying him with almost tragic exactitude. At the end of her scrutiny she had something like the shadow of a smile and she sat down in a chair.
“Don’t you think,” Observed Angus, absently, “t
hat it’s rather cruel to eat these halfpenny buns? They might grow up into penny buns. I shall give up these brutal sports when we are married.”
The dark young lady rose from her chair and walked to the window, evidently in a state of strong but not unsympathetic cogitation. When at last she swung round again with an air of resolution she was bewildered to observe that the young man was carefully laying out on the table various objects from the shop-window. They included a pyramid of highly colored sweets, several plates of sandwiches, and the two decanters containing that mysterious port and sherry which are peculiar to pastry-cooks. In the middle of this neat arrangement he had carefully let down the enormous load of white sugared cake which had been the huge ornament of the window.
“What on earth are you doing?” she asked.
“Duty, my dear Laura,” he began.
“Oh, for Lord’s sake, stop a minute” she cried, “and don’t talk to me in that way. I mean, what is all that?”
“A ceremonial meal, Miss Hope.”
“And what is that?” she asked impatiently, pointing to the mountain of sugar.
“The wedding-cake, Mrs. Angus,” he said.
The girl marched to that article, removed it with some clatter, and put it back in the shop window; she then returned, and, putting her elegant elbows on the table, regarded the young man not unfavorably but with considerable exasperation.
“You don’t give me any time to think,” she said.
“I’m not such a fool,” he answered; “that’s my Christian humility.”
She was still looking at him; but she had grown considerably graver behind the smile.
“Mr. Angus,” she said steadily, “before there is a minute more of this nonsense I must tell you something about myself as shortly as I can.”
“Delighted,” replied Angus gravely. “You might tell me something about myself, too, while you are about it,”
“Oh, do hold your tongue and listen,” she said. “It’s nothing that I’m ashamed of, and it isn’t even anything that I’m especially sorry about. But what would you say if there was something that is no business of mine and yet is my nightmare?”
Death Locked In Page 42
