He was dusting his coat. It was really a very respectable coat, when he brushed off the shabbiness which he had applied with French chalk. The enormous boots, removed, disclosed a neat pair of shoes worn beneath them. The horribly striped socks were dummies, which he unbuttoned and put in his pocket. The red choker, removed also, proved that the impression it conveyed at first sight was false: he actually wore shirt, collar, and tie underneath it, and all three were quietly elegant. Before Essen-den's staring eyes, he slipped off the very purple cap and the eyeshade, wiped the blue make-up from his chin with his handkerchief, and so ceased to bear the slightest resemblance to Albert George.
"An ingenious device," he said, "to divide the enemy's camp. But not, to tell you the truth, original. None the less useful for that."
"Did you have any trouble?" asked Jill. "Not much. Just one rough man. He hit me once, which was tiresome, and he hit the wall once, which must have hurt him quite a lot. Otherwise, no damage was done. And the whole bunch went off to look for the car like four maggots in search of a green cheese."
Essenden, standing back against the wall with Jill Trelawney's automatic centred unwaveringly on his waistcoat, knew fear. There was a gun in his own pocket, but he dared not reach for it. The girl had never taken her eyes off him for more than a fleeting second, and the expression in those eyes told him that her finger was itching on the trigger.
He realized that he had been criminally careless. Even when he saw her outside the front door, he had not been alarmed—so insanely blinded had he been by the story of Albert George. He knew that his four guards would return in a few moments; he was sure also that, whatever she meant to do, she would not do it while he could convince her that so long as she held her hand she had the chance of getting the information his advertisement had offered; he had meant to play up that offer—it was his trump card for an emergency, and he had been convinced that as long as he held that card he could be in no real danger. But the unmasking of Albert George—the revelation that there was not only Jill Trelawney, but also Simon Templar, to cope with—that had upset Essenden's confident equilibrium.
There was something rather horrible about a shifting flicker of snapping nerves in the eyes of such a fussy and foolish-looking little man.
The grimly brilliant scheme that he had elaborated was toppling down like a house of cards. . . .
But Jill Trelawney only laughed.
"Now we have our talk, don't we?" she said; and Lord Essenden seemed to shiver—but that might have been due to nothing but the draught from the French windows which his guards had left ajar when they went out.
By the windows stood the Saint.
"The boys are coming back," he said. "This time, I think, a gun might save trouble."
He stepped over to Essenden, lifted the automatic from Essenden's pocket, and retired to the cover of a bookcase which projected in such a way that it would hide him from the view of anyone entering by the windows.
"And if you'll just take Essenden for a walk," he drawled, "I'll give a yodel when the collection is complete. It's a bit late in the year, but you might find some mistletoe somewhere——"
"O.K., Big Boy."
Simon watched Essenden removed; and leaned back against the wall with the peer's gun swinging lightly in his hand.
Voices spoke outside the windows. The voice of Red Harver, booming above the others, said: "A plant, that's what it was——"
And the voice stopped short, on the threshold of the room, it seemed to Simon; and the other voices died down also.
Then Flash Arne spat an unprintable word.
Keld yapped: "He couldn't've got outa those ropes—not by hisself, he couldn't——"
"There's the rope there on the floor where he was," Ganning hissed derisively. "I suppose he just melted and trickled through it and froze again on the other side."
"Don't talk soft," snarled Harver. "We know Albert George was a liar. One of his pals has been in here while we were outside——"
"Quate," said the Saint apologetically. "Oh, quate!"
Harver whipped round, his fists doubling; but the automatic in the Saint's hand discouraged him. It discouraged Ganning, who was renowned for his slick-ness on the draw, and Flash Arne, who knew some tricks of his own; and it discouraged Matthew Keld, that violent but efficient rope expert.
"Sorry," said the Saint, without regret, "but it's a cop as George said."
Red Harver, peering savagely at him, recognized him by his voice.
"You——"
"Oh, no," said the Saint in distress. "Never. I hate sitting with my back to the engine."
He herded the four men into a convenient corner, in his briskly persuasive way, and raised his voice to Jill. Lord Essenden came through the door first, and Ganning drew in his breath sharply; but the mystery was solved when Jill Trelawney followed.
"If you'll take over," said the Saint, "I'll go and look for some more rope."
The girl nodded briefly. Her automatic, swinging in a little arc over the latitude of the five prisoners, said all that there was left to say.
Simon went swiftly through the pockets of the group, and brought back four guns, two life preservers, a knife, and a razor, which he deposited in the coal scuttle with a faint gesture of distaste.
Then he sought the kitchen, and presently came back with six fathoms of good cord.
His methods of roping were less primitive than those of Matthew Keld, but they were equally efficient. When he had finished, only four Houdinis could have restored Messrs. Arne, Ganning, Keld, and Harver to the position of mobile actors in the scene. Essenden, however, he left. "You might," he suggested to Jill, "want to ask his lordship a few questions. And I might want this rope's end to encourage him to answer."
He made a long yard of rope whistle horrifically through the air; but the girl shook her head.
"He's already started to answer."
Simon raised his eyebrows.
"Have you rung a bell?"
Essenden spoke in a cracked voice: "Of course I've answered. Why shouldn't I have meant what I said in my advertisement? But I thought you might think my advertisement was a trap, so I had to protect myself. That's the only reason I brought these other men into it."
"A beautiful bunch!" murmured the Saint skeptically. His leisured gaze swept over the quartet like a genial blizzard. "I think I know them all. I know about Red Harver's seven years for manslaughter—which ought to have been a quick hanging for murder. I know all about Brother Matthew and the Waikiki Club. I know how Flash Arne gets the money to buy his diamond rings. And I've met Snake Ganning before. Say 'how d'you do,' Snake."
"I admit all that," said Essenden fretfully, "but——"
"What you mean," said Jill Trelawney calmly, "is that you laid a trap for us, but we've made you the pigeon. You're in the soup you brewed for Simon and me. Your gay little party has kind of bust. And now, to save your skin, you're prepared to reopen your original offer. Having flopped on the double-cross, you're anxious to hurry back to the first bargain. Isn't that it?"
She had no grounds for asking whether that was it. But then, the question was almost purely rhetorical. What she was actually doing was to point out to Essenden the only course of action that was left open to him. She wasn't asking a question at all—she was commanding. Persuasively she spoke, in a quiet and reasonable voice, with sudden death aimed steadily from her hand, and murder in the clear tawny eyes like two drops of frozen gold.
"Yes," said Essenden hoarsely, "that's it."
"Go on."
Essenden swallowed.
"Your father wasn't framed."
He paused.
"I said—Go on!"
The girl's voice ripped out like a pistol shot; yet she had not spoken loudly. The likeness came only from her tone—sharp, swift, distinct, deadly.
"I was in it—I admit that—the thing he was framed for, but he was unlucky. You don't believe me. But I can prove it. I've kept the papers�
�papers that never came into the inquiry, naturally. If they had, they'd have made it worse for him. I can show you letters in his own hand ——"
"Where?"
"In my private safe—hidden away—"
"Where?"
Essenden seemed to flinch from the glacial inclemency of her voice.
"In the cellar."
"Oh, yeah?" said the Saint unnecessarily.
"There's a door under the main staircase. You go down——"
"And flop through a patent trapdoor into the castle drains," said the Saint, unimpressed. "Sorry to disappoint you, comrade, but we've heard that one before."
The girl answered unemotionally.
"I'll go and see if he's lying," she said. "If he is— well, you can use that rope's end. But we might as well see—in case he's telling the truth by accident."
Simon tossed the length of rope onto the table with a shrug.
"I'll go," he said, "though I don't think it's much use. Let's have some more directions. Down the stairs——"
"You come to the wine cellar," said Essenden. "Go straight through that. There's a door at the far end, and the key hangs on a nail beside it. You'll find some more steps down. They lead into what's left of an old secret passage. About twenty yards along, it opens into a sort of cave . . ."
Simon heard out the story.
"Right," he said. "It sounds to me like a feeble attempt to waste time, but I'll go. I'm just warning you that if it is a waste of time—oh, Marmaduke, my pet, you're going to wish you'd never had that bright idea."
"I'm not wasting time," said Essenden.
The Saint looked at him. He had a dim suspicion that there was something in Essenden's eyes that should not have been there; but he could not be sure. And yet—what could the trick possibly be? Not more than a device to get rid of the man, in the hope that the woman would be easier to deal with.
Regarded in that way, the idea became ludicrous— to anyone with a scrap of imagination and the slightest knowledge of Jill Trelawney. Yet Simon turned in the doorway and spoke a ridiculous warning.
"Jill," he said, "it's just possible that he's expecting to do something clever when he's got you alone. But the dangerous four are safely trussed up, and Marmaduke's a very silly little man and not at all necessary to the cause of Empire Free Trade—so if he does raise up on his hind legs——"
"You should worry," said the girl. "That's just what I'm waiting for. I've got both eyes on his lordship, and they're not blinking till you come back."
"Good enough, baby," said the Saint, and drifted out.
He went down the hall and found the door under the main staircase without any difficulty. Opening it, he found a switch, and went down a long flight of stone stairs, finding the wine cellar at the bottom, as he had been told he would. By his side, at the foot of the stairs, he found another switch, and with this he was able to light up the cellar. The door at the far end was of massive and ancient wood, heavily barred, and studded with iron. He would have expected such a door to be heavily dusted and cobwebbed; but a faint trace of oil about the hinges was enough to tell his keen eyes that he would not be the first person to penetrate into the passage.
He took down the key. It was bright and newly burnished, and the lock turned easily. Beyond the door, when he had opened it, he found another switch, and this lighted up a row of frosted bulbs along the tunnel that faced him.
A breath of damp, musty air struck his face. He went on cautiously, and with a faint feeling of illogical alertness tingling up his spine—a feeling almost amounting to apprehension. He scowled at the feeling. There was no reason for it—no basis beyond the fact that he had imagined he had caught in Essenden's eye a flicker of an expression whose interpretation had baffled him. But he went on, calling himself every manner of fool, and kept his hand on his gun.
The passage sloped steeply downwards, and the last ten yards were almost precipitous. He descended them gingerly by the aid of well-worn crevices in the stone paving that must once have been another flight of steps, before they had been worn away into mere ridges in a steep slope.
The roof of the passage, which had been low at the beginning, did not descend with the slope. It remained at its old level, so that the space above his head became loftier as he went down. At the foot of the slope the passage took a sharp turn. He rounded the corner and found himself suddenly in the place that Essenden had described as "a sort of cave." It was certainly a sort of cave, but of a sort that the Saint had never expected to find in such a place. Where he entered it the roof was not very high, and the light from the last of the row of bulbs which had led him there illuminated it. But of the extent of the cavern he could not judge. It stretched away beyond the rough semicircle of illumination, its ultimate depths of darkness dwarfing the light at that one end. He spoke a few pointless words with some idea of testing the dimensions of the cave, and the echoes of his voice reverberated backwards and forwards with a wild and swelling intensity until they almost deafened him, and then gradually rolled and rattled away into the bowels of the earth. And when the echoes had stopped, in the utter silence and loneliness of the place, he had no inclination to burst into tears because his instructions did not compel him to penetrate any farther into that gigantic crypt.
He turned. The aperture through which he had come seemed now, in perspective with the rest of the place, to have a puny and insignificant appearance, like a mouse hole in a cathedral wall; but on the right of the entrance he found what he had been told to look for. In the centre of the wall of the cave, about a dozen feet apart, were two sets of chains hanging from iron staples cemented into the rock. He was to look between these.
He went forward. At the foot of the cavern wall, between the wall and himself, ran a kind of dark stream, about four feet wide. Standing on the edge of this, he was able to see, in the wall opposite him, a flat square slab like a flagstone let into the natural rock—exactly as he had been told he would find it.
With a sigh he retired a few paces, removed his shoes and socks, and turned up his trousers. Then he stepped delicately into the dark, ice-cold water.
It could not have been more than six inches deep.
Chapter VIII
HOW JILL TRELAWNEY MADE A SLIP, AND
THERE WAS A LOT MORE PADDLING AND
GENERAL MERRIMENT
LORD ESSENDEN shifted his feet.
More than ten minutes had passed since the Saint had left the room. Essenden's arms, wearied almost to paralysis by the strain of the position of surrender which he had been compelled to adopt, had sagged lower and lower until now they hung straight down and aching at his sides.
Jill Trelawney had permitted the movement—it was the only thing to do. Sheer fatigue enforced it. But she never let her eyes stray an inch from their relentless concentration, and the gun she held was as unwavering as if it had been gripped in the hand of an automaton. And Essenden was too wise to attempt to put into practice any of the bold bids for freedom that flashed in theory through his brain. He knew that, so far as Jill Trelawney was concerned, there could be little to choose between any of the possible excuses for rendering vacant the barony of Essenden in the county of Oxford.
But the time passed; and Jill Trelawney, tirelessly watching her prisoner, was troubled by the first stirrings of anxiety.
She owed much to Simon Templar. Whatever questions might be asked about her association with him, and the various conflicting debits and credits therein involved, there was one fact that stood away above all discussions or dispute. Forty-eight hours before, he had thrown up a new and promising career to rescue her from under the very nose of the law. That was an item on one side of the ledger which could hardly be cancelled by any number of contra accounts.
And still Simon Templar had not come back.
She had no idea what could have happened to him—if anything had happened. But it was not in her nature to dawdle along and hope for the best. He should have returned by then, an
d he had not returned. The reason for the delay might be made apparent in due course; but she was not inclined to leave it to chance.
"Essenden!"
Her voice crisped into the silence that had fallen upon the room with Simon Templar's exit; and Essenden started.
"The Saint has been gone a long time," said the girl —quietly and sufficiently.
"He may have met with some difficulty——"
"Or he may have met with some—accident."
The sentence was an accusation, and she was watching Essenden closely, but his face betrayed nothing.
"The slab in front of the safe may have stuck——"
"Then we'll go and help him to open it."
Essenden's eyes evaded her searching scrutiny.
"I don't see—"
"But I do!" She was sure now. "Essenden, you'll come down to that cellar—with me!"
A muscle twitched in the shadow of Essenden's drooping moustache; and again the girl spoke.
"You don't want to go down there. Exactly. There's " something down there which might be dangerous. . . . Oh, yes, I saw it in your face! And that's why we're going."
She opened the door.
"March!"
"I don't——"
Jill Trelawney's eyebrows lowered over her frosty stare.
"I said—March!"
Essenden opened his mouth, and closed it again. He went to the door.
"Get a move on."
"It's your own funeral, if you insist on going down there."
"I do insist. Get on!"
He obeyed. The door under the main staircase was open, and the light was on. Essenden led straight to it; and Jill followed, tensely alert for the faintest hint of treachery. They went down the flight of steps. The iron-barred door at the far end of the wine cellar had also been left open by the Saint in his passage.
They followed the tunnel, with Essenden moving slowly and hesitantly in the lead, hardly spurred on by the girl's tongue, and Jill Trelawney keyed up to a tingling wariness. But he went on without an attempt at active resistance, and scrambled in front of her down the last ten yards of steep furrowed slope. She descended after him, slowly, with infinite precautions against a false step that might have given him a chance to turn the tables.
The Saint Meets His Match (She was a Lady) Page 13
