He came into the hall, and released the spring of the hidden door. As the panel turned under his hand, he heard the purr of a motor coming nearer. It drew up. The bell clanged. Mr. Ember stepped into the darkness and closed the panel behind him.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Anthony Luttrell’s distaste for his errand had certainly not lessened during the long drive from town. He stood now on his own doorstep facing a strange butler, and heard a formal “Not at home,” in response to his inquiry for Lady Heritage.
“And Miss Molloy?” he asked.
“Not at home,” repeated Blotson.
If this was a reprieve it was an unwelcome one. Anthony would very much have preferred to get the thing over.
“I will wait,” he said briefly, and walked past Blotson into the hall. “I am Mr. Luttrell,” he explained, and Blotson’s resentment diminished very slightly. After a moment’s hesitation he threw open the study door and ushered Anthony into the room.
“If Lady Heritage is in the house she will see me,” said Anthony. “If she is out I should like to see Miss Molloy or, failing her, Mr. Ember.” He walked to the window and stood there looking out until Blotson returned.
“Lady Heritage is out, sir, and Miss Molloy is out. Mr. Ember was in just now, but he must have stepped out again.”
“I will wait,” said Anthony for the second time.
When Blotson had gone, he stood quite still, following out a somewhat uneasy train of thought. As the minutes passed, uneasiness merged into anxiety.
Jane ran the whole way to the walled garden. Once inside its door she made herself walk in order to get her breath. When she came into the potting-shed she knew just what she was going to do, and set about doing it in a quiet, businesslike way. From a stack of pots she took about half a dozen, broke all but two of them, and gathered the sherds into the lap of her dress. She put the two unbroken pots on the top of the sherds. Then she took a sharp pruning-knife from the shelf, opened the trap-door, and went down the steps.
As soon as she came into the main corridor she began to put down the broken sherds, taking care to make no noise. She laid a trail of them up to the laboratory turning, and then all along the turning itself, disposing them in the middle of the fairway in such a manner as to ensure that they should not fail to be seen by any one flashing a light along the passage. She put the last two or three sherds in a little pile about a yard short of the arch leading to the slanting passage with the well in it. As she bent down there she heard Belcovitch maintaining an impassioned Slavonic monologue within the laboratory.
She stood in the archway, threw her two unbroken pots against the opposite wall with all her might, and then ran back down the well passage until it turned.
Everything happened just as she knew that it would happen.
Belcovitch stopped talking and swore. It was a polysyllabic curse, very effective. Then the steel gate was flung open, and in three languages Mr. Belcovitch demanded of the silence an account of what was happening. His voice ran away into a hollow echo, and died miserably.
Jane heard him stamp back into the chamber, cursing, and return. This time he flashed a light before him. Flattened against the wall, Jane saw its glow reflected from the side of the passage in which she was. Belcovitch had seen the sherds and was ex-claiming and muttering. She heard him pass the arch.
Jane stole to the mouth of the slanting passage. Belcovitch was two yards away on her left, flashing his light down the tunnel, seeing more broken pots, and more and more, and swearing all the time, not loudly but with considerable earnestness. Jane slipped like a shadow across behind him and round the corner. The steel gate was wide open. She ran through it and into the lighted laboratory.
Henry lay on the stone floor in front of her, bound hand and foot. He had rolled over on to his side and was staring at the gate. Raymond had risen to her feet, and was taking a half-step towards Henry as Jane came running in.
“Shut the gate,” said Henry in a sharp whisper.
“There’s another way out, and I don’t think they know it. Quick, Jane, quick!”
Jane slammed the gate. She had the pruning-knife in her hand, and she was down on her knees and at work on the black silk muffler before the sound of the slam reached Mr. Belcovitch. When it did reach him he spun round and came back at a run with a revolver in his hand and murderous fury in his heart.
Jane cut through the last shred of silk, and because Belcovitch’s hand was shaking with rage his first bullet missed her and Henry handsomely.
“Get up against the wall, quick!” Henry commanded.
As he spoke he was himself half rolling, half scrambling towards the wall. His ankles were still tied, but his arms were free. The second bullet just missed his head. Jane cried out, and then they were both out of the line of fire. Henry was breathing hard.
“Give me the knife,” he panted, and began to saw at some of the toughest rope he had ever come across.
Raymond had remained standing. She had retreated almost to the end of the room and wore a look of extreme surprise.
“Why do you call her Jane?” she asked. Her deep voice came through the racket with strange irrelevance.
Belcovitch continued to make the maximum amount of noise in which it is possible for a man and a revolver to collaborate. He banged the steel gate in the intervals of firing, and he cursed voluminously.
The rope gave, and Henry was half-way on to his feet when there was a sudden cessation of all the sounds. Raymond gave a warning cry, and Henry caught at Jane’s shoulder and straightened himself. The steel gate was opening.
Jane said, “Henry—oh, Henry darling!” and there came in Mr. Jeffrey Ember, very cool and deadly, with his little automatic pistol levelled. Just behind him came Belcovitch, a silent Belcovitch, at his master’s heel.
“Touching scene,” said Ember. “Captain March, if you don’t put your hands up at once I shall shoot Miss Molloy. From her last exclamation, I should imagine that you’d rather I didn’t. Miss Molloy, go across to the opposite wall and stand there. Belcovitch, kindly keep your revolver against that young lady’s temple, but don’t let it off till I give you leave. Raymond, I should be glad if you would resume your chair. A brief conversation is, I think, necessary, and I should prefer you to be seated.”
He stood not far from the entrance, dominating the room. The gate had been closed by Belcovitch. Ember waited till his instructions had been carried out; then he came a little nearer to Lady Heritage and said:
“Time presses, Raymond. I must go. I wish that there were more time, for indeed I would rather not have hurried you.”
Jane, with the muzzle of Belcovitch’s revolver cold against her temple, found her attention caught by Ember’s words. Time… yes, that’s what they wanted—time. Piggy had said that Anthony might arrive at any moment. When he did arrive and found that they were all mysteriously absent, surely his first thought would be to search the passages. She raised her voice and said insistently:
“Mr. Ember.”
Ember threw her a dangerous look.
“Be quiet,” he said shortly.
“There was something I wanted to tell you,” said Jane.
“Out with it then, and be quick.”
“You called me Miss Molloy just now…”
“No, Jane, no!” said Henry violently.
Mr. Ember echoed the remark made by Lady Heritage.
“Why do you call her Jane?” he inquired.
“That is what I was going to tell you,” said Jane. “You called me Miss Molloy, and I just thought I would like you to know that I’m not Renata Molloy. It would make an untidy sort of finish if you went away thinking that I was, and I hate things untidy.”
“You’re a little devil,” said Ember… “a little devil.”
Jane stuck her chin in the air.
“Well, I’m not Renata Molloy anyhow,” she said. “No one would ever have called her a devil. She was a white rabbit—a nice, quiet, tame white rabbit.”
Jane’s voice failed suddenly on the last word. Yet Mr. Ember had not looked at her again. His eyes went past her to Belcovitch, and it was to Belcovitch that he spoke.
“No, not yet,” he said, “but if she speaks again you can shoot.”
A long, slow shudder swept Jane. She leaned against the wall and was silent, and she shut her eyes because she could not bear to see Henry’s face. Ember turned back to Raymond.
“I’m sorry to hurry you.” His voice was low and confidential. “What I have to offer, you know. It is yours for the taking. Please don’t make any mistake. I have to change my base, it is true—I have even to change it with some haste—but neither that nor anything else can now affect my purpose and its achievement. What I offered is, without any shadow of uncertainty, mine to offer and yours to take, if you will…if you will, Raymond?”
Raymond’s sombre gaze dwelt on him as he spoke. The whole scene affected her as one is affected by something which is taking place at a great distance. She did not seem able to adjust her mental focus to it. Her mind seemed to be divided into two parts. One of them was entirely and unreasonably preoccupied with the relationship between Jane and Henry, and the reason why Henry should have addressed Renata Molloy as Jane. These thoughts seemed to circle as continuously, and with as little aim, as goldfish in a glass bowl. The other part of her mind was bruised and sick because Jeffrey Ember had been her friend. When he said, “Will you, Raymond?” she did not speak. She looked at him in silence, and presently made a slow gesture of refusal.
Ember came a step nearer.
“I told you,” he said, “that I was in dead earnest. Perhaps you don’t realise just what I mean by that. I’ve played for a high stake, and I mean to have what I’ve played for or nothing. I’ve played for you, and if…” He broke off. “Let me put it this way. Either we make the future together or there’s no future for either of us. I’m speaking quite soberly when I tell you this. Think well before you answer, but don’t be too long. If there is to be no future our present will end here and now. This place is mined, and if I press that unobtrusive knob, which you may notice above the safe, the end will be quite a dramatic one. I have always had some such contingency in view, and this makes as good a stepping-off place as any other. Think before you refuse, Raymond.”
She shook her head again. Her eyes never left his face. Ember made an impatient gesture.
“Are your friends going to thank you?” he said. “You are taking the heroic pose, and forgive me if I say that it’s a little unworthy of you. I expected something less obvious. Take my offer, and I guarantee to leave Captain March and Miss Molloy here unharmed. Can any woman resist sacrificing herself? Come, will you save them, Raymond?”
Lady Heritage spoke for the first time:
“I suppose that I must be a fool because I trusted you ... I did trust you, Jeffrey… but I don’t know what you have ever seen in me to make you suppose that I am such a fool as to trust you again… now.”
Her words and her voice caused a change in Ember, a change as difficult to define as to describe. It is best realised by its effect upon those present. Some impression of shock was received in varying degree by them all. Henry March had, perhaps, the most vivid sense of it. In Belcovitch it bred panic.
Whilst Ember was speaking the hand that held the revolver to Jane’s temple had become more and more unsteady. The muzzle knocked cold against her cheek bone and jabbed against her ear. Jane wondered when the thing would go off. So, it is to be imagined, did Henry, for he was grey about the mouth and his forehead was wet.
Ember did not speak for a moment. Then he said:
“Touché!” in a queer, bitter voice.
Belcovitch began to mutter in an undertone that gradually became louder. His hand shook more and more.
“Sure, Raymond?” said Jeffrey Ember. “Quite, quite sure?”
He came up quite close, and laid his right hand lightly on her shoulder. It was the first time that he had touched her.
She said just the one word, “Yes.” For a moment his hand closed hard upon her. Then he sprang back with a laugh.
“All right, then we go up together.” And, as he spoke, he made for the corner where a little vulcanite knob showed above the steel safe.
With a sort of howl Belcovitch whirled to meet him. They crashed together and grappled, Ember silent, Belcovitch torrential in imprecation and fighting as a man frenzied with terror does fight. His revolver dropped from his hand, and Ember stumbled over it.
Like a flash Henry had Raymond by the arm, whilst his eyes commanded Jane and he pointed to the passage that led out of the laboratory on the extreme right. It was the one that Jane had explored first, and as she ran into it she remembered that it ended in a small chamber full of packing-cases. In a panting whisper she said:
“It’s full of boxes.”
“Then we must shift them,” said Henry, and, groping in the almost dark, he began to pull the cases away from the right-hand wall.
“A light—he can’t find the spring without a light.”
Raymond heard her own voice saying this, and then she ran back down the passage and into the laboratory.
Belcovitch had put his torch down on the bench from which Jane had taken the lists. Its exact position was, as it were, photographed on Raymond’s consciousness. She reached, snatched it, and was back again in the least possible space of time. As she came, she saw Ember and Belcovitch swaying, struggling—horribly near the corner. And as she went she had an impression of Belcovitch falling and, as he fell, dragging Ember down with desperate, clawing hands. Then she was trying to steady her hand and throw the light upon the wall space which Henry had cleared; but the beam wavered and shook, shook and wavered; and Jane took the torch out of her hand, setting it on one of the packing-cases.
“It should be here. It should be just here Henry spoke in a muttering whisper; then with sharp irritation, “Nearer with that light, Jane.”
Jane held it closely to the wall. Henry’s hands slid up and down, feeling… pressing. Once they heard Belcovitch shout, and all the time the sound of the struggle filled their straining ears. Some one fired a shot—and Henry found the spring. A slab of stone swung outwards, pivoting as the other doors had done.
Henry pushed Jane through the opening, flung his arm round Raymond, dragged her through and slammed the stone into place. They were in the narrow alley-way between the row of veronica bushes and the terrace wall, on the spot where Mr. George Patterson had stood listening to Raymond’s voice. The air, the daylight, the mist, seemed wonderful beyond words. Jane never again beheld a mist without remembering that joyful lift of the heart which came to her when the stone shut and she drew her first long, free breath. Henry gave her no time to savour the joys of freedom.
“Run, run like blazes!” he shouted.
Jane ran. Once she started she felt as if nothing would ever stop her. She heard Henry just behind her; she heard him urging Raymond on, and they came out of the alley-way round the end of the terrace, round the side of the house.
Then it came.
The ground shook; there was a muffled thud and a long, heavy rumble that died slowly. Then with a terrific crash two of the stone urns along the terrace wall fell and broke. As the noise ebbed there came the tinkling sound of splintered glass falling upon stone.
Jane stopped running as if she had been shot, and reeled up against Henry, who put his arms round her and held her tight. Up to that very moment the feeling of unreality, of playing a part in a play for which she had no responsibility whilst her real self looked on remotely—this feeling had dominated her. Now it was as if the curtain fell and she, Jane, was left groping amongst events that terrified her. She trembled very much, and clung to Henry, who was at that moment the one really safe and solid thing within reach.
Raymond did not pause or turn her head, but walked straight on towards the house.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The last rumble of the explosion had hardly died
away before Anthony Luttrell had flung open the study door, and was making his way at a run towards the Yellow Drawing-Room.
At the glass door which led on to the terrace he halted, opened it wide, and stood on the step looking out. Some glass was still falling from the broken windows on this side of the house. All the terrace on the right of where he stood was like a drawing in which the perspective has gone wrong. There was a great bulge in one place, and some of the paving-stones were tilted aslant, whilst others had fallen in, leaving a gaping hole over which a cloud of dust was settling.
Anthony turned his back upon all this and came back with great strides into the hall. Without so much as a look behind him to see whether he was observed, he loosened the spring, pushed open the door in the panelling and there halted, suddenly remembering the need of a light. He went back for a torch, and then passed down the steps without waiting to close the door.
That something appalling had happened was obvious. With the self-control without which it is impossible to meet an emergency Anthony kept his thought focused upon what he was doing. At the bottom of the steps the way was still clear. He saw Jane’s broken pots and wondered what on earth they were doing there. Then he turned into the laboratory passage, flashing the light ahead of him. Half-way along the passage the roof had fallen in.
Anthony turned, came back into the main corridor, ran along it until he came to the place where the well passage joined it. Here he turned off, made his way cautiously past the well, and again found a mass of stone and rubble blocking his path. A cold horror came over him, and all those thoughts to which he had barred his mind came insistently nearer, pressing past those barriers and taking his consciousness by storm. He came back into the hall and shut the door in the panelling.
The hall was quite empty, but the voice of Blotson could be heard at no great distance. It was raised in exhortation and rebuke. Obviously he rallied a staff which inclined to hysteria, for one could hear a woman’s sobs and a subdued chorus of perturbation and nervous inquiry.
The Astonishing Adventure of Jane Smith: A Golden Age Mystery Page 25
