“I should say,” replied Mrs. Gibbins, “that they happen pretty regularly twice a week—generally on Wednesdays and Fridays.”
Mr. Woodburn laughed heartily. Thorndyke’s appearance on the scene had evidently acted favourably on his spirits.
“Quite a methodical chap,” he chuckled. “Keeps regular hours, and has a wash and brush up before he goes home.”
“We mustn’t take him too much for granted,” Thorndyke reminded him. “We have got to establish his existence as a matter of undoubted fact, though I must admit that Mrs. Gibbins’s account is extremely circumstantial and convincing. It establishes a case for a very thorough investigation and I think we had better begin by having a look at the door of the gallery. What will be about the height of that keyhole that you spoke of?”
Mr. Woodburn indicated the height by reference to a point on his own waistcoat. “But I am afraid the keyhole won’t help you much,” he added. “As I think I told you, I couldn’t see anything through it, excepting a patch of the opposite wall.”
“Perhaps we can manage to get a better view,” said Thorndyke; “that is, if there is nothing in the way. Probably, Mrs. Gibbins can tell us about that. How was the furniture arranged when you were in there last?”
“There is very little furniture in there, at all,” the housekeeper replied, “unless you call the wall-cases furniture. There is a large table across the end of the room, and there are three chairs, one arm-chair and two ordinary dining-room chairs. The arm-chair is behind the table, nearly in the middle, and the other two are at the ends of the table.”
“You say they ‘are,’” Thorndyke remarked. “Do you mean that that is how they were placed when you were last in the room?”
“Yes, sir. But I think they must be like that still, because the last time I was in there was on the day when Mr. Toke went away. I helped him to shut up the room and seal the door. They couldn’t very well have been moved after that.”
“Apparently not,” Thorndyke admitted. “Then, in that case, we may as well go and have a look at the door and see if it is possible to get a glimpse of the inside of the room. And perhaps we had better take a chair with us, as the keyhole is at a rather inconvenient height.”
Mr. Woodburn picked up a chair and led the way out of the morning room in which we had been holding our conversation, across the hall and into a narrow passage, which became almost dark as a sharp turn cut off the light from the doorway by which we had entered.
“Queer old place,” he remarked as the corridor took another turn. “All holes and corners. I am wondering how you are going to see into that room. I couldn’t; but I suppose a man who can produce another man’s seal out of a top hat won’t make any difficulty about seeing round a corner.”
“We have only undertaken to try,” Thorndyke reminded him. “Don’t let us take credit prematurely.”
The disclaimer was not entirely unnecessary; for, when the corridor took yet another abrupt turn and brought us to a blind end in which was a massive door it became clear to me, from the manner both of Mrs. Gibbins and Mr. Woodburn, that there was an expectation of some sort of display of occult powers on Thorndyke’s part. So much so that, for the first time, I felt quite grateful to Polton.
“There you are,” said Mr. Woodburn, placing the chair in position, and standing back expectantly to watch the proceedings, as if he had some hopes of seeing Thorndyke put his head through the keyhole, “Let us see how you do it.”
My colleague seated himself with a deprecating smile, and, laying the research case on the floor, unfastened the catch and raised the lid; whereupon Mr. Woodburn and Mrs. Gibbins craned forward to peer in, Having taken a preliminary peep through the keyhole, Thorndyke produced the little wooden case and drew out Polton’s diminutive spy-glass, which he inserted easily enough into the roomy opening. As he applied his eye to the tiny eyepiece and turned the milled ring to adjust the mirror, the two observers watched him with bated breath; as, indeed, did I, and with no small anxiety. For, apart from the importance of the result, a complete failure would have been a shocking anticlimax. Great, therefore, was my relief when Thorndyke announced:
“Well, at any rate, there is no obstruction to the view, such as it is. But it is not easy to make out the arrangement and relative positions of things with such a very restricted field of vision. However, as far as I can see, there are no signs of any appreciable disturbance. I can see the wall-cases at the end of the room, and their shelves are filled with what look like Bow and Chelsea figures. So there has been no robbery there. The cases at the sides of the room are not so easy to see, but I think I can make out the contents, and they appear to contain their full complement. Evidently, so far as the collection is concerned, there has been no robbery on any considerable scale.
“Then the position of the furniture corresponds generally with Mrs. Gibbins’s description. There is an arm-chair behind the table and an ordinary dining-chair at each end. I can also see what looks like a shallow box or case of some kind on the table.”
“A box on the table?” exclaimed Mrs. Gibbins. “That is curious. I don’t remember any box, or anything else, on the table.”
“Perhaps Mr. Toke put it there after you left,” suggested Mr. Woodburn.
“But he couldn’t,” Mrs. Gibbins objected. “I went out with him and helped him to seal up the door. He couldn’t have gone back after that.”
“No. That is obvious,” Woodburn admitted. “So it looks as if someone had been in the room, after all.”
“Do you say, positively, Mrs. Gibbins, that there was nothing on the table when you left the room with Mr. Toke?” Thorndyke asked.
“Well, sir,” the housekeeper replied, “one doesn’t like to be too positive, but I certainly thought that there was nothing on the table. In fact, I feel sure that there wasn’t.”
“That seems pretty conclusive,” said Woodburn. “What do you think, Doctor?”
“It is conclusive enough to us,” Thorndyke replied, diplomatically. “But, as a lawyer, you will realize the difficulty of coming to a definite decision on negative evidence. To justify you in acting in direct opposition to your client’s instructions, you ought to have undeniable positive evidence. We are not considering our own beliefs, but the legal position.”
“Yes, that is true,” Mr. Woodburn conceded, evidently interpreting Thorndyke’s polite hint that ladies are sometimes apt to confuse the subjective with the objective aspects of certainty.
“Do you see any thing else?”
“No. I think that is the sum of my observations. But remember that the room is strange to me. Perhaps if you, who know the room, were to take a look through the instrument, you might detect some change that would not be apparent to me.”
To say that Woodburn jumped at the offer would be to understate the case. In his eagerness to occupy the seat of observation, he nearly sat on Thorndyke’s lap. But, apparently, Polton’s “contraption” did not come up to his expectations, for, after peering in at the eyepiece for some seconds, he said in a tone of slight disappointment:
“I don’t seem to make much of it. I can only see a tiny bit at a time, and everything looks in its wrong place. The table seems to be right opposite this door instead of where I know it to be.”
“You must disregard the positions of things,” Thorndyke explained. “Remember that you are looking into a mirror.”
“Oh, I hadn’t realized that,” said Woodburn, hastily. “Of course, that explains the odd appearance of the room.” He reapplied his eye to the instrument, and now was able to manage it better, for he presently reported:
“I think the cases look all right and everything else appears as usual. As to that box, of course, I can say nothing. I have never seen it before, and I can’t quite make out what sort of box it is. It looks like metal.”
“That was what I thought,” said Thorndyke. “Perhaps Mrs. Gibbins may recognize it.” The suggestion was evidently acceptable, for the housekeeper “outed” Mr. Woodburn with great promptne
ss, and, having seated herself, applied her eye to the instrument. But she was even less successful than her predecessor, for, after a prolonged stare through the eyepiece, she announced that she could see nothing but the carpet, which appeared, unreasonably, to have affixed itself to the opposite wall. However, Thorndyke came to her aid, and eventually enabled her to see the mysterious box on the table; concerning which she again asserted with deep conviction that, not only was she quite sure that it had not been there when she and Mr. Toke had vacated the room, but that she was equally certain that she had never seen the box before at all.
When she had finished her observations (which seemed to concern themselves principally with the floor and the ceiling), I came into the reversion of the chair, by way, ostensibly, of confirming the previous observations. And, when I came to look through the little instrument in the conditions for which it was designed, I was disposed to be apologetic to Polton. The field of view was, indeed, extremely small, but the little circular picture at which one looked was beautifully clear and bright; and the fine adjustment for moving the mirror enabled one to shift the field of vision gradually and preserve a continuity in the things seen that had, to some extent, the effect of a larger field.
“Well,” said Woodburn, as I rose from the chair, “what have we arrived at? Or haven’t we arrived at any conclusion?”
“I think,” said Thorndyke, “that we must conclude that our observations tend to confirm the suspicion that someone had obtained access to this room. But I do not think that we have enough evidence to justify us in disregarding Mr. Toke’s very definite instructions.”
“Then,” said Woodburn, “what do you suggest that we ought to do?”
“I suggest that we make a careful survey of the house to see if we can find any means of access to this room that the seals do not cover; and if, as I expect, we fail to find any such means, then we must make some more exact and continuous observations from this door.”
“You don’t suggest that we post someone at this keyhole to keep watch continuously, do you?” exclaimed Woodburn.
“No,” replied Thorndyke. “That would be impracticable. But I think we could achieve the same result in another way. At any rate, I will take the preliminary measures before we go away from here, in case they may be needed.”
He withdrew the “spy-glass” from the keyhole, and, having put it away in the research case, produced from the latter a small cardboard box which, when the lid was removed, was seen to contain a number of little cylinders of hardwood about six inches long and of varying diameters, from a quarter of an inch up to five-eighths.
“These,” he explained, “are gauges that my assistant has made to obtain the exact dimensions of the keyhole, so that he can make a more efficient instrument.”
“The instrument that you have got is efficient enough,” said Woodburn. “The trouble will be to get someone to stay here to use it.”
“Perhaps we can produce an instrument that will do its work without an attendant,” replied Thorndyke. “But we will talk about that when we have made our survey. Now, I will just take these measurements.”
He seated himself once more and proceeded to pass the larger cylinders one by one through the keyhole. All of them passed through fairly easily excepting the two largest, which were returned to the box.
“The internal diameter of the keyhole,” said Thorndyke, “is nearly nine-sixteenths of an inch. Probably it has been a little enlarged by wear, but even so the key must have been an out-size. I shall call it half an inch.”
He marked, with a pencil, the approved cylinder, and, having returned it to the box, announced that he was ready to proceed to the next item in the programme.
“Perhaps,” he suggested, “we had better take a glance at the lofts which are over the gallery.”
Mr. Woodburn looked interrogatively at the housekeeper, who volunteered the information that the entrance to them was at the top of the back staircase, and that the key was on her bunch.
“The entrance to the lofts is not sealed, then?” Thorndyke remarked.
“Apparently not,” said Woodburn; “which suggests that we are not likely to find anything of interest in them. Still, we may as well have a look at them and satisfy ourselves.”
We followed the housekeeper through a surprising labyrinth of passages and rooms, which seemed to be on all sorts of levels, with steps up and down, which made it necessary to approach all doors with caution to avoid being tripped up or stepping into empty air. Eventually, we came to an unlocked door which gave entrance to the back staircase, up which Mrs. Gibbins preceded us in a dim twilight. At each landing, open doors gave glimpses into dark and mysterious corridors which apparently burrowed among the bedrooms, and the top landing showed us, in addition, a locked door with an enormous keyhole, into which the housekeeper inserted a ponderous key. The door creaked open, and revealed a flight of narrow, ladder-like stairs, up which we crawled painfully and cautiously, Thorndyke bringing up the rear, encumbered with his research case and the Poltonic walking-stick.
There was no door at the top of the stairs (which seemed a lost opportunity on the part of the architect), and only a pretence of a landing outside the narrow doorway which gave entrance to the lofts. Here we stood for a few moments, looking into the long range of well-lighted lofts that stretched away on either side. There was something a little weird and impressive in the aspect of those great, wide attics with their rough oaken floors, littered with the cast-off household gods of forgotten generations, stretching away into the distance among the massive and almost unhewn timber of the great roof. Each of the two ranges—for we stood at the angle of the body and the wing of the house—was lighted by a pair of dormer windows on each side, filled with little panes of greenish glass set in leaded casements, so that we were able to see the whole extent with the exception of a few dark corners at the extreme ends.
“Well,” said Woodburn, looking a little distastefully at the littered floor, covered, as it seemed, with the dust of centuries, “is it worth while to go in? Looks a bit dusty,” he added, with a glance at his brilliantly polished boots.
“I think I will just walk down the lofts,” said Thorndyke, “as a matter of form, though it is pretty clear that there have been no recent visitors. But there is no need for you to come.”
That it was but a mere formality became evident as soon as we had started; for, glancing back, I could see that we had left plain and conspicuous footprints in the impalpable dust that lay in an even coating on the bumpy floor. Evidently, we were the first visitors who had trodden that floor for, at least, some years.
“Still,” said Thorndyke, when I made a remark to this effect, “we had to establish the fact. If there is some secret way into the gallery, our only chance of discovering it will be by excluding, one by one, all the places in which it is not to be found. This is evidently one of them.”
“Well,” said Woodburn, as we emerged; “we can write off the lofts, I think. Dust has its uses, after all. What are we going to explore next?”
“I suppose,” Thorndyke replied, “we had better examine the outside of the premises.”
“Yes,” Woodburn agreed, “that seems to be the reasonable thing to do, seeing that, if there have been any visitors, that is where they must have come from. But there is mighty little to see. I can tell you that much, for I have made a thorough inspection, myself.”
Mr. Woodburn was right. There was very little indeed to see. The gallery stood above a range of what were now cellars, but had formerly been rooms, as we gathered from the windows, some entirely bricked up, while others were reduced to small openings, glazed with ground glass and protected by stout iron bars. The only approach to them was from within the house, by a massive door at the bottom of a flight of stone steps; and that door was not only sealed, but also secured by a heavy padlock of the Yale type, of which the minute key-slit was covered by a sealed label.
From outside the house, there was no entrance of any kind to th
e gallery wing. The windows of the gallery, itself, looked on the garden at the back of the house; but an inspection of them by means of the ladder, which had been put there for our convenience, only served to confirm Woodburn’s account of them. They were obviously untouched; and the lace curtains on the inside made it impossible to get the faintest glimpse into the room. The windows of the rooms which communicated with the gallery were equally impossible as a means of access. We examined them with the aid of the ladder from the narrow strip of garden that separated the side of the wing from the high wall that enclosed the whole domain. They, also, were evidently intact, and were guarded internally by massive shutters that effectually excluded the possibility of seeing in.
“That seems to be the lot,” said Woodburn, as we put the ladder back where we had found it, “unless there is anything else that you would like to see.”
Thorndyke looked up at the house, inquisitively, and then glanced along the wall down the garden. “I think,” said he, “I understood you to say that there was a churchyard on the other side of that wall.”
“Yes. Do you want to see it? I don’t know why you should.”
“We may as well take a look at it,” was the reply. “Any visitors, entering the house at night, would probably come over that wall rather than through the front grounds, particularly if there is a churchyard to take off from. A country churchyard is pretty secluded at night. It would even be possible to use a portable ladder.”
“So it would,” agreed Woodburn. “And this is a disused churchyard. They have built a new church at the other end of the village, the Lord knows why. They had better have restored the old church. But any visitors to the old churchyard would have the place to themselves at night.”
“Then let us go and inspect it,” said Thorndyke. “If there have been repeated visits, there ought to be some traces of the visitors.”
We went back through the house and out by way of the drive and the front gate. Turning to the right, we walked along the front of the Manor House grounds to the end of the enclosing wall where it was joined by the lower wall of the churchyard. Presently, we came to a dilapidated wooden gate which yawned wide open on its rickety hinges. Passing in through this, we took our way along an overgrown path, past a tall headstone and a decayed altar tomb, enclosed by rusty, ivy-grown railings. In front of us, a great yew tree cast a deep shadow across the path; and beyond, a smallish, ancient-looking church, with gaping windows from which the tracery had disappeared, huddled under a dense mantle of ivy, looking the very picture of desolation and decay. As we walked, Thorndyke looked about him critically, keeping an attentive eye on the ground beside the path, the high, neglected grass which everywhere sprang up between the graves being obviously favourable to a search for “traces.”
The Third R. Austin Freeman Megapack Page 125
