CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The Cat’s Eye
When we stood up at the bottom of the bank, I turned to Thorndyke and asked:
“What are we going to do now? We must make some effort to let those poor devils out.”
“That,” he replied, “is an impossibility. In the first place they are certainly dead by now, and in the second it would be certain death to attempt to open that door. The chamber is full of the vapour of hydrocyanic acid.”
“But,” I expostulated, “we ought to do something. Humanity demands that we should, at least, make a show of trying to save them.”
“I don’t see why,” he replied coldly. “They are certainly dead, and if they were not, I would not risk a single hair of my head to save their lives. Still, if you have any feeling on the matter, we can go and reconnoitre. But we must look to our own safety.”
He struck out along the floor of the moat at a brisk pace, and I kept up with him as well as my trembling knees would let me, for I was horribly shaken by the shocking experiences of the last few minutes, and still felt sick and faint. Thorndyke, on the other hand, was perfectly unmoved, and as he strode along at my side, I glanced at his calm face and found in his quiet, unconcerned manner something inhuman and repelling. It is true that those two wretches who now lay stark and dead on the floor of that dreadful chamber deserved no sympathy. They had digged a pit for us and fallen into it themselves. But still, they were human beings, and their lives were human lives, but Thorndyke seemed to value them no more than if they had been a couple of rats.
About a hundred yards farther along the moat, we came to a cross path, at each end of which was a flight of rough steps up the bank. We ascended the steps on the house side, and these brought us to a small door with a Tudor arch in the head. A modern night-latch had been added to the ancient lock, but it was a simple affair which Thorndyke’s picklock opened in a few moments, and the door then yielded to a push. It opened into a corridor which I recognised as the one which we had passed through and where I had seen the face at the window—a dead face it was now, I suspected. We turned and walked along it in the direction in which Blake had led us, and as we neared the end I began to be sensible of a faint odour in the musty air; an attenuated scent of bitter almonds.
“We must go warily,” said Thorndyke. “The next room, I think, is the one out of which the secret chamber opens.”
He paused and stood looking dubiously at the door; and as he stood hesitating, I pushed past him, and seizing the handle, flung the door open and looked into the room. But it was only an instantaneous glance, showing me the uninterrupted wall, the wooden block lying where Blake had kicked it, and close by, a dead rat. The sight of that little corpse and the sickening smell of bitter almonds that suddenly grew strong in the air as the door opened, produced an instant revulsion. My concern for our would-be murderers was extinguished by a thrill of alarm for my own safety. I drew the door to hurriedly and followed Thorndyke, who was walking quickly away.
“It is no use, Anstey,” he said, a little impatiently. “It is mere sentiment, and a silly one at that. All we can do is to open these windows and clear off until the gas has diffused out. It won’t take so very long with all the gaping joints in this old woodwork.”
“And what are we going to do meanwhile?”
“We must find the housekeeper, if there is one, and let her know the state of affairs. Then we must send information to the police at Aylesbury, and before they arrive, I think it would be well to prepare a written statement, which we can sign in their presence and which should contain all that we are prepared to say about the matter before the inquest.”
“Yes,” I agreed “that seems to be the best course,” and with this we proceeded to open the rusty casements of the corridor and then made our way back to the new wing of the house.
The inn-keeper had certainly been right. Squire Blake had been very far from lavish in the matter of retainers. One after another of the great, dusty rooms we crossed or peered into without encountering a single serving-man or maid. The house seemed to be utterly deserted. At last we came to the entrance hall, and here, as we stood commenting on this extraordinary solitude, a door opened and a faded and shabby elderly woman, looking like a rather superior charwoman, emerged. She looked at us curiously and then asked:
“Can you tell me, sir, if Mr. Blake is ready for lunch?”
“I am sorry to say,” replied Thorndyke, “that Mr. Blake has met with a mishap. He has locked himself in his dark room and has poisoned himself accidentally with some chemicals.”
“Oh dear!” exclaimed the woman, looking at Thorndyke with a sort of stupefied dismay. “Hadn’t some one better go and fetch him out?”
“That is not possible at present,” said Thorndyke. “The room is full of poison gas.”
“But,” the woman protested, “he may die if no one goes to his assistance.”
“He is dead already,” said Thorndyke, “and there is another person in the room with him, who is also dead.”
“That will be Mr. Meyer, his valet,” said the woman, staring at Thorndyke with a sort of bewildered horror, puzzled, no doubt, by the incongruity between his tragic tidings and his calm, matter-of-fact demeanour. “And you say they have both killed themselves! Lord! Lord! What a dreadful thing!” She clasped her hands, and gazing helplessly from one of us to the other, asked: “What are we to do? Oh! what are we to do?”
“Is there any one whom we could send into Aylesbury?” asked Thorndyke, “We ought to let the police know of the accident, and we ought to get a doctor.”
“There is only the lodge-keeper,” she whimpered shakily “He could go on Mr. Meyer’s bicycle. Dear, dear! what an awful thing it is!”
“If you will have the bicycle brought to the door,” said Thorndyke, “I will write a note and take it up to the lodge-keeper myself. There are writing materials in the library I suppose?”
She supposed there were, and showed us into the room, where we found some notepaper and envelopes. Then she departed, wringing her hands and muttering, to fetch the bicycle.
“I shall not give any details in this note,” Thorndyke said as he sat down at the table and uncapped his fountain pen, “I shall just tell them that Mr. Blake and his valet have met their deaths—presumably—by poisoning, that it is a police case, and that the Divisional Surgeon had better accompany the police officer.”
With this he wrote the note, addressing it to the Superintendent or Chief Constable, and he had just closed and sealed it when the woman reappeared to announce the arrival of the bicycle, which had been brought to the door by a young woman, apparently a housemaid. Thorndyke mounted the machine and rode away swiftly up the drive, and I turned back into the house, followed by the two women, who, now that the first shock had spent itself, were devoured by curiosity and eager to extract information.
Their efforts in this direction, however, were not very successful, for, although the facts must very soon become public property, it seemed desirable at present to say as little as possible, while, as for any explanation of this extraordinary affair, I was as much in the dark as they were. So I maintained a discreet, though difficult, reticence until Thorndyke reappeared, when the two women retired and left us in possession of the room.
“I sent our friend off with the note,” said my colleague “and I told him enough to make sure that he will put on the pace. It is only about four miles, and as the police probably have a car, we may expect them pretty soon. I will just draft out a statement of the actual occurrences, and you had better write, on the same paper, a confirmatory declaration. We can read them to the officer and sign them in his presence.”
He proceeded to write out a concise, but fairly full, narrative of what had befallen us in this house, with a brief statement of the nature of our business here, and when I had read it through, I wrote at the foot a paragraph confirming the statement and accepting it as my own. This occupied some considerable time, and we had not long finished whe
n there was a somewhat peremptory ring at the bell, and a minute later, the elderly woman—whom I assumed to be the housekeeper—entered, accompanied by a police officer and a gentleman in civilian clothes. The former introduced himself briefly and got to business without preamble.
“Concerning this note, sir,” said he, “you have given no particulars. I suppose there is no doubt that Mr. Blake and his valet are really dead?”
“I should say there is no doubt at all,” replied Thorndyke. “But I have written out a statement of the particulars, from which you will be able to judge. Shall I read it to you?”
“I think the doctor had better see the bodies first,” was the reply.
“Certainly,” agreed the doctor. “We don’t want to waste precious time on statements. Where are they?”
“I will take you to them,” said Thorndyke, “but I must tell you that they are shut in a room which is filled with the vapour of hydrocyanic acid.”
The two men gave a startled look at Thorndyke, and as he led the way out into the hall and across the new wing, they followed, talking together earnestly but in low tones. Presently they overtook us, and the officer remarked:
“This is a very extraordinary affair, sir. Has no attempt been made to get these men out of that room?”
“No,” replied Thorndyke.
“But why not?”
“I think you will see when you get there.”
“But,” exclaimed the doctor, “surely some effort ought to have been made to save them! You don’t mean to say that you have left them in that poisoned air and made no attempt even to open the doors and windows?”
“We have opened some of the neighbouring windows,” said Thorndyke; and he proceeded to give a description of the secret chamber and its surroundings, to which the doctor listened with pursed-up lips.
“Well,” he remarked dryly, “you seem to have been very careful. Is it much farther?”
“It opens out of the next room but one,” replied Thorndyke, and as he spoke I detected in the air a very faint odour of bitter almonds. I fancy the doctor noticed it, too, but he made no remark, and when we reached the end of the corridor and Thorndyke indicated the door that gave access to the room, both men hurried forward. The doctor turned the handle and flung the door open, and he and the officer stepped briskly across the threshold. And then they both stopped short, and I guessed that they had seen the dead rat. The next moment they both backed out hastily and the doctor slammed the door behind him and followed us to the discreet distance at which we had halted.
“The vapour is as you say,” said the latter, visibly crestfallen, “in an extreme state of concentration.”
“Yes,” agreed Thorndyke, “but it is much less than it was. If you will go a little farther away, I will throw the door open and we can then retire and let the vapour diffuse out.”
“Do you think it safe, sir?” queried the officer. “There’s a fearful reek in there;” then, as Thorndyke approached the door, he and the doctor (and I) walked away quickly up the corridor; and looking back, I saw my colleague, pinching his nostrils together, fling the door wide open and hurry after us.
When we had retired to a safe distance, the officer halted and said:
“You were saying something about a statement, sir. Shall we have it now? I don’t understand this affair in the least.”
Thorndyke produced the statement from his pocket and proceeded to read it aloud; and as he read, the two men listened with growing astonishment and not very completely concealed incredulity. When he had finished, I read out my statement, and then we both signed the document, the officer adding his signature as the witness.
“Well,” he said, as he put the paper in his pocket-book, “this is a most extraordinary story. Can you give any kind of explanation?”
“At the moment,” replied Thorndyke, “I am not proposing to go beyond the actual occurrence—certainly not until I have seen the bodies.”
The officer looked dissatisfied, and naturally enough. On the facts presented, he would have been quite justified in arresting us both on a suspicion of murder; and indeed, but for Thorndyke’s eminent position and my own status as a Kings Counsel, he would probably have done so. As it was, he contented himself with the expression of a hope that we should presently be able to throw some light on the mystery, on which remark my colleague offered no comment.
When about half an hour had passed, Thorndyke suggested that the vapour had probably cleared off from the room out of which the secret chamber opened and that it might now be possible to open the door of the chamber itself. Our friends were somewhat dubious, however. The sight of the dead rat had effectually dissipated the doctor’s enthusiasm and engendered a very wholesome caution.
“Perhaps,” said Thorndyke, “as my friend and I know where to find the concealed fastenings of the door, we could open it more safely. What do you say, Anstey?”
I was not much more eager than the doctor, but as Thorndyke would certainly have gone alone if I had refused, I assented with assumed readiness, and we started down the corridor, followed at a little distance by the other two. On entering the room, in which the odour of the poison had now become quite faint, Thorndyke opened both the casements wide and then slid the block of wood close up to the foot of the door.
“Now,” said he, “when I say ‘ready,’ take a deep breath, close your mouth, pinch your nostrils, and then push in the right-hand boss. I will press the other one and open and fix the door. Ready!”
I pushed in the boss, and immediately afterwards Thorndyke pressed in the other one. The door yielded, and as we pushed it wide open, he thrust the block in after it. Glancing in, I had a momentary glimpse of the dark chamber with the two dead men lying huddled on the floor and an extinguished lantern by the side of the nearer one. It was but the vision of an instant, for almost as the door opened, I turned with Thorndyke and ran out of the room; but in that instant it was imprinted on my memory for ever. Even as I write, I can see with horrible vividness that dark, gloomy hold and the two sprawling corpses stretched towards the door that had cut them off in the moment of their crime from the land of the living.
The first breath that I took, as I came out of the room, made me aware that the poisonous vapour was pouring out of the chamber of death. Our two friends had also noticed it and were already in full retreat, and we all made our way out of the old wing back to the library, there to wait until the poison should have become dissipated. The officer made one or two ineffectual efforts to extract from Thorndyke some explanation of the amazing events set forth in his statement, and then we settled down to a somewhat desultory conversation on subjects criminal and medical.
We had been in the library rather more than half an hour and were beginning to discuss the possibility of removing the bodies, when the doorbell rang, and a few moments later the housekeeper entered, followed by Sir Lawrence Drayton, Winifred, and Mr. Brodribb. The latter came in with a genial and knowing smile, which faded with remarkable suddenness as his eye lighted on the police officer.
“Why, what the deuce is the matter?” exclaimed Sir Lawrence as he also observed the officer.
“The matter is,” replied Thorndyke, “that there has been a tragedy. Mr. Blake is dead.”
“Dead!” exclaimed Drayton and Brodribb in unison.
“And what,” asked the former, “do you mean by a tragedy?”
“Perhaps,” said Thorndyke, “the officer would allow me to read you the written statement that I have given him. I may say,” he added, addressing the officer “that this lady and these gentlemen are interested parties and that they will all be called as witnesses at the inquest.”
This latter statement, utterly incomprehensible to me, seemed to be equally so to every one else present. Sir Lawrence and Brodribb stared in astonishment at Thorndyke, while the officer, with a frown of perplexity, slowly took the statement from his pocket-book and handed it to my colleague without a word. Thereupon the latter, having waited for the housekeeper t
o withdraw, read the statement aloud, and I watched the amazement growing on the faces of the listeners as he read.
“But, my dear Thorndyke!” Sir Lawrence exclaimed, when he had finished, “this is a most astounding affair. It looks as if this search had been a mere pretext to get you here and murder you!”
“That, I have no doubt, is the case,” said Thorndyke, “and that I suspected to be the object when Brodribb conveyed the invitation to me.”
“The devil you did!” said Brodribb. “But why should you suspect that Blake wanted to murder you?”
“I think,” replied Thorndyke, “that when we have seen the bodies you will be able to answer that question yourself. And I should say,” he added, turning to the doctor, “that it would now be possible to get the bodies out. Most of the fumes will have blown away by this time.”
“Yes,” the doctor agreed, evidently all agog to see and hear the explanation of this mystery. “We had better get a sheet from the housekeeper and then go and see if we can get those poor wretches out.”
He set forth in company with the officer, and as soon as the two strangers had left the room, Brodribb attacked my colleague.
“You are a most inscrutable fellow, Thorndyke. Do you mean to tell me that when you proposed this search, you were just planning to give this man, Blake, an opportunity to murder you?”
“To try to murder me,” Thorndyke corrected.
“And me,” I added. “It begins to dawn on me that the post of junior to Thorndyke is no sinecure.”
Brodribb smiled appreciatively, and Sir Lawrence remarked:
“We seem to be navigating in deep waters. I must confess that I am completely out of my depth, but I suppose it is useless to make any appeal.”
“I should rather say nothing more at present,” Thorndyke replied. “In a few minutes I shall be able to make the crucial test which I expect will render explanations unnecessary.”
The Second R. Austin Freeman Megapack Page 42
