And then the two men exchanged glances, and Dearborn rose and put down his book with an air of resignation. He beckoned her and passed to the other end of the apartment, and there found a door which Larry had overlooked; for the edge of the panels which covered it so overlapped that no crevice was visible.
“I designed this house myself,” he explained simply, “and built it myself with only twenty workmen from Tuscany.”
Later she was to find much of that was true. The chamber in which she found herself, led by the fascination of a growing horror, was unfurnished and unadorned. She heard a strange humming sound and a curious vibration beneath her feet. Then David stopped, fumbled with something on the floor, and opened a little trap-door less than a foot square. It revealed a pane of glass, and when her eyes had become accustomed to the unexpected perspective, she saw beneath her a small room, evidently lighted from the ceiling.
She had no time to take in the details of the room; her eyes were focussed upon the figure that sat on the edge of the bed. With his handkerchief he was binding a wound in his hand, and at first she did not recognize him. Then he looked up, for, though he could not see the occupants of the room above, he had heard the sound of the trap opening.
She stared and screamed, for it was Larry Holt who sat there, and he was chained by the ankle.
CHAPTER XLI.
DIANA PULLS A LEVER
Dearborn put his arm about her waist and dragged her from the room into the saloon. When he released her, her knees gave way under her and she dropped to the floor.
“Everything must be seemly,” said Dr. Judd gravely. “We cannot countenance a vulgar scene. Do I speak your mind, brother?”
“Exactly, my dear,” answered David Judd.
Diana stared up at him from the floor, resting her shaking body upon her arms.
“What are you going to do with him?” she asked wildly.
Again the brothers looked at one another.
“You tell her, doctor,” said David gently.
Dr. Judd shook his head.
“I think you should tell her, my dear David,” he answered. “You are so very delicate in these matters, bless you—and remember,” he added, “that she is your wife.”
David had seated himself and was leaning over the arm of the chair, his immobile face fixed upon Diana’s.
“When I have finished with him,” he said, “I shall drown him.”
She started up, her hand to her mouth.
“My God!” she breathed.
The dreadful truth came upon the girl with a rush. These men were madmen! Madmen who preserved all the outward appearance of sanity, who day by day and for years had conducted a business with sane men and never once betrayed the kink in their unwholesome minds. She shrank back from them, farther and farther back, until she was against the panelling of the opposite wall. They were her father’s murderers! She thought she was going to faint, but dug her nails into her palms in a tremendous effort to keep her senses. Mad, and the world rubbed shoulders with them and never suspected!
“Shall I read?” asked David quietly.
“Yes, yes, read,” she said eagerly.
They were to kill Larry when he had finished reading!
That was the thought which obsessed her as she turned her drawn face to the man. The vanity of this monomaniac was flattered, and he betrayed his agitation in his stumbling speech as he read the first two pages of his manuscript.
Then his voice grew calmer, and the girl understood in a wondering way that he was imparting into these dead and lifeless words a beauty which only his mind could see, but which, in some extraordinary way, he was conveying also to her.
Dr. Judd had slipped from his chair to the big bearskin rug before the fire and sat with his legs crossed, his hands clasped before him, his large eager face turned to his brother. And here was another curious circumstance which the girl noted numbly. Those lines which seemed brilliant to David were brilliant also to the other, and when he paused self-consciously, as if for applause, it was always the doctor who anticipated his desire.
“Wonderful, wonderful! Is he not a genius, Miss Stuart?” asked Stephen.
She glanced quickly at the other, expecting to find him embarrassed, but he sat bolt upright, a complacent smile upon his heavy face, a benevolence in his eyes. And they were planning murder! They had murdered many men in this terrible house, she thought, and wondered. Had they sat here whilst their victims fought their last fight in that horrible dungeon, the one reading and the other listening to these trite sentences, these age-worn situations which both believed were the work of a supreme genius?
“This is not my best work,” said David, as though reading her thoughts. “You like it, of course?”
“Yes,” said the girl in a low voice. “Go on, please.”
She hoped to keep them occupied throughout the whole of the night. She knew that the police would be searching for Larry, and perhaps one of them knew this house in Chelsea. But those hopes were to be shattered, and her heart gave a wild leap as she saw David close the manuscript book and put it tenderly on the table beside him.
“Brother,” he said, “I think——?”
The doctor nodded.
“And it would be a gracious thing, and a picturesque beginning for all the happiness which lies ahead of us, if this fair hand——” He took the unresisting hand of Diana in his, and again he did not complete his sentence.
He took his keys from his pocket, the keys that Flash Fred had so carefully duplicated, and Larry had duplicated again, and walked to the door through which the girl had entered the room. He smiled to himself as he inserted the key and the door swung open.
“Will you come this way, dear girl?” he asked. She hesitated, then, summoning her courage, followed him down a flight of steps.
Again there was a door at the end. A little room filled with machinery she saw, when he put on the light. He walked to a switch.
“You shall have the honour of releasing our friend—we bear him no malice—Mr. Holt.”
“Release him?” she asked huskily. “Do you mean that?”
She hesitated, her hand upon the black lever in the wall.
“Why do you not open the door and let him out?” she asked suspiciously.
“That will open the door and release him. Believe me, my dear, I would not in this hour deceive you.”
It was the doctor who spoke in his softest tone, and she hesitated no longer. Her brain was in a whirl. She could not analyze either their motives or their sincerity, nor could she appreciate the fact that to these men deception was a habit of thought. She swung the lever back and it came more easily than she had expected. Then she looked at the door.
“Let us go and meet him,” said the doctor, and put his arm round her shoulders.
She shivered, but did not attempt to escape, and so he led her up the stairs and back into the salon, closing and locking the door behind him.
Then, before she could guess or anticipate his intentions, the arm about her shoulders had become a grip as firm as a vise, and she found herself pressed closely to the big man.
“My wife, I think, brother,” he said.
“Undoubtedly your wife,” said the doctor; “for the world is yours to pick and take from, my dear.”
“My wife,” repeated Dearborn without emotion, and brought his lips to hers.
She was frozen with terror, incapable of movement. Why did not Larry come? Then, as suddenly as he had seized her, the doctor released his hold and took her cold hand in his.
“Come back to the fire, wife,” he said. “I will finish the third act of this great work of mine, and by that time Mr. Holt will be dead.”
CHAPTER XLII.
IN THE TRAP
Larry sat on the iron bedstead of the cell, his aching head between his hands. He had anticipated many ends to that night’s adventure, but never did he imagine that he would be trapped like a rat, and that the mystery of Box A would be solved in so startling a fashion. So that was the explanation of Gordon Stuart’s death. He had accepted the invitation of Dr. Judd to go with him in his box, and there had met the sinister figure of Dearborn. He had either been drugged or clubbed to insensibility and had been carried in John Dearborn’s strong arms through the emergency door in the passage and whisked away to the House of Death.
If he had not anticipated such an end to the evening, he thought, he had at least made some preparations. Instinctively he had known that of all places on the face of the earth where his quarry would be run down and “Finis” might be written to the Stuart case, no other spot was so likely as in this terrible mansion which the Judds had built for themselves, and the object of his visit that morning had been twofold. He desired to know and to see with his own eyes the evidence of the men’s wickedness; but he had also a wish to understand the ultimate danger to himself and to the girl.
He smiled as he thought of Diana, sitting snugly at home, and wondered what she would feel if she knew his position.
His captor had taken from him every weapon he carried, but that did not worry Larry overmuch. He got up from the bed and walked about the room, but the weight of chain at his ankle made it necessary that he should gather a yard of it slack in his hand. He gave one glance at the black holes in the wall near the floor, for it was from these that danger would come. Well and truly had these men planned their execution-room. No cry for help, no sound he might make, would penetrate through these concrete walls. The light in the ceiling was protected by a thick and heavy globe of glass. It reminded him of a bulkhead light.
He wanted to test the length of the chain, for he had ample time, he thought. Dearborn would be in the house by now. He heard the click of the trap-door above and looked up, but saw nothing. He waited for another half-hour, then pushed over the big block of stone to which the chain was fastened. Before his eyes could fall upon the bag he had left there in his earlier visit, the light went out.
Curiously enough, he had not provided for that contingency, and he drew a sharp breath. The bag was there: his fingers touched and pulled it out, and he groped inside for the keys. Had there been light, there would have been no difficulty in selecting that which unlocked the anklet; but now he tested three, and none of them fitted the bronze clamp about his ankle.
He heard a sound, a low, gurgling sound, such as water makes when it is poured from a bottle; and then about his feet came an eddy of cold air. He tried another key, and that, too, failed him. Worse still, it remained fixed in the lock, and he could not pull it out.
He heard the rush of the water coming through the small holes in the wall, and the dull throb of a pump. He tugged at the key, great beads of sweat running down his cheeks, and then, with a sigh of relief, it came out. The water was over his boots now and rising rapidly.
There was only one more key to try; the rest were too big for the purpose. He drew that out, but the ward caught in the string of the bag in which he had put them, and the key fell into the water. He groped down; it had gone! Again and again he flung his hand through the swirling water, and his fingers groped along the rough concrete floor. Presently with a cry he felt it and, lifting his ankle with an effort, he inserted the key. It turned. The anklet opened, and he was free.
There were still the two doors, and he knew that, with the pressure of water, it would require his utmost efforts to open them.
The water was up to his waist now, and he waded along the passage and up the two steps, holding the waterproof bag between his teeth. The key turned easily enough, but there was no handle to pull, and every second increased the pressure of the water. He set his teeth and, gripping the key in both hands, he pulled steadily, steadily.…
CHAPTER XLIII.
THE PASSING OF DAVID
Diana had heard the dread words without understanding them at first.
“By that time Mr. Holt will be dead!”
She opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came. She had killed Larry! Her hand had pulled the lever which drowned him! That was the word Judd had used. Drowned him—but how? As the thought took more definite shape she swayed toward the doctor and gripped his shoulder for support. She would not faint, she told herself; she would not faint! There must be a way of saving Larry. She looked around for some weapon, but there was none; and then she grew calmer. They were madmen and must be humoured. But the time was short.
Again she assumed an attitude of attention, but her mind and eyes were busy, and as David Judd leaned forward she saw something that brought a thrill of hope to her heart. His jacket was open and showed just a glimpse of white shirt where his arm passed through the waistcoat, and against that strip of white was a sharp black line. She looked again and saw it was an automatic pistol, worn in a holster under the armpit. She remembered reading of desperadoes who carried their guns that way, so that they might be ready to hand; and possibly David had read, too.
He was in the midst of an impassioned love scene when her hand darted forward and closed over the butt. With a jerk she pulled it free and stepped back, overturning the little table on which her supper tray had been laid.
“If you move I’ll kill you,” she said breathlessly. “Open that door, and release him!”
The two men were on their feet, staring at her.
“You—you interrupted my reading,” cried David, in the tremulous voice of a hurt child. He did not seem to be conscious of any danger.
“Open the door,” she breathed, “and release Larry Holt, or I’ll kill you!”
David frowned and put his hand on the mantelpiece. She saw his fingers touch a button, and as the lights went out she fired.
The explosion deafened her. A second later his strong arms were around her and he had flung her into the chair and stood glaring down at her.
“You interrupted my reading,” he almost sobbed, and Dr. Judd, a frowning figure, looked anxiously from her to his brother. “And now,” said David petulantly, “I will not marry you.”
His big hand gripped the edge of her bodice and dragged her to her feet. His eyes were wet with tears, the tears of pride, of humiliation. Then, with the sudden caprice of a madman, he released her.
“He is dead now, I should think, brother,” he said, turning to the doctor, and Dr. Judd drew a sigh of relief and nodded.
“Yes, he is dead now,” he said. “The water rises at the rate of one foot in two minutes, I think.”
“One foot in a minute and fifty seconds,” said David.
“Spare him, for God’s sake!” cried the girl hoarsely. “I will give you anything—anything in the world you want! If it is money, you shall have it!”
“I think she ought to see him,” said David, ignoring her frenzied appeal.
“There is no light,” said the doctor, and shook his head.
“Of course not. How stupid of me! We always put the light out,” said David, whose fit of anger seemed to have passed. “Then the water comes up through the little holes at the bottom of the cell very, very quickly. It is pumped from the roof of the house. We have a large tank there, you know,” he went on, “and the person we drown cannot rise because of the weight of his feet. Once a man got on the bed—do you remember?”
“I remember,” said the doctor in a conversational tone. “We had to put nine feet of water into the cell before he died.”
She listened numbly. It was a nightmare, she told herself, and presently she would wake.
“And that takes a long time to pump out. It was very thoughtless of him. So much had to be done,” David continued, and his brother was looking at him for the first time anxiously.
“We had to dry the bed,” David went on, “and did you notice the chain was rusty, brother? That isn’t right. It is an eyesore to me.”
He turned and looked at Diana thoughtfully.
“My wife,” he said in a low voice, and there was a sudden fire in his eyes which terrified her. “My wife,” he said again, and caught her to him with a horrible animal cry that set her shrinking.
“I want you, Judd!”
He spun round. Someone had come into the room and was standing now with a pistol aimed straight at the man’s heart.
It was Larry Holt.
CHAPTER XLIV.
THE END OF THE CHASE
“Don’t move,” said Larry. “Resistance is useless. Listen to that.”
There was the faint sound of a crash in the hall.
“Those are police officers, and they are inside the house,” said Larry laconically.
Slowly David pushed the girl away from him and faced the intruder, looking at him from under his heavy brows. Larry did not see the man’s hand move, so quick was the motion. A wind fanned his cheek, a panel splintered, and the two shots sounded like one to the half-fainting girl.
David Judd stood for a moment erect, then staggered a little.
“My beautiful plays!” he said, and choked.
Then, without another word, he crashed to the floor, dead.
“David, David!” Dr. Judd threw himself upon the body. “David, don’t act! I will get you beautiful actors for your work. I don’t like to see you doing it, David! It frightens me. Tell him not to!”
The big man, his florid face gone white, looked up appealingly at Larry Holt, who stood with his smoking pistol in his hand, his eyes fixed upon the two.
“Mr. Holt, you have influence with him,” whined the doctor, his face streaming with tears. “Tell him, please, not to do this! It frightens me when he acts. Sometimes he acts for hours in this room—little pieces from his own wonderful plays. You must ask him to read you some, Mr. Holt. David——!” He shook the body, but David was beyond the voice of his brother.
Then the doctor stood up. He came across to Larry, laying his large hand on the other’s like a frightened child. Larry was so overwhelmed by the tragedy of it all that he could not speak. This grown man, whose brilliant brain had conceived and dared so much, was for a moment like a little child.
Suddenly the doctor’s head came up.
“I am sorry,” he said huskily. “Poor boy!”
He looked at Larry Holt long and steadily.
“Mr. Holt,” he said, “I have been behaving childishly, but I am perfectly sane. I accept full responsibility for all my acts—and all the acts of my brother. I know quite well what I have done.”
Harvey had burst into the room and stopped dead at the scene, until Larry beckoned him forward.
“Take him,” he said.
“I wish we had finished you,” said Dr. Judd as they led him away.
The girl was in Larry’s arms now, her face hidden against his shoulder.
“This is the end of the bad road,” he whispered, and she nodded. As they came into the vestibule, one of the police officers who filled the hall saluted him.
“We’ve taken the servant, sir. He was locked up in another part of the house.”
“He knows nothing about it,” said Larry. “You can safely release him. And, anyway, I haven’t taken the trouble to get a warrant for him.”
A tall man came out of the broken doorway which Larry discovered led to the servants’ quarters, and took the girl’s hand in his.
“You’ve had a terrible experience, Miss Stuart,” he said, and she recognized the Police Commissioner, and tried to smile. “I have my car here. You had better come along, Larry. Harvey can charge Dr. Judd.”
They drove back to Scotland Yard, and Larry said very little on the journey. He sat by the girl’s side, her hand in his, and answered the questions the Commissioner put to him briefly and without elaboration. It was when they were back in the Commissioner’s office that Larry spoke.
“John,” he said, “I hope you are not going to report this matter to the Government as an achievement on my part.”
Sir John looked at him with an inquiring frown.
“Of course I shall,” he said. “Who else takes credit?”
Larry put his hand on the girl’s shoulder.
“Here is the best detective we have had in Scotland Yard for many years,” he said simply.
Diana laughed.
“You silly man,” she scoffed, “of course I am not. Who was the best detective you could have had to deal with this case?”
“You,” he said.
She shook her head.
“The best detective was Dr. Judd, if you could have secured his services. And he was best because he knew most of this matter, knew all the secrets which we were trying to discover. I was in very much the same position; I was inside the game. Once I knew, as I did, that Clarissa Stuart was myself, I was able to mystify you. For when it was clear that poor Emma—I nearly called her aunt—poor Emma Ward was the charwoman who had seen my—my father, and had left in such a state of great agitation, there was no doubt whatever in my mind that it was my father. And when that was clear, the rest was rather easy. I knew then that I was the objective of the gang. No, Larry, you are and you have been wonderful.”
Larry shook his head with a smile.
“Anyway,” said the Commissioner dryly, “does it matter who gets the credit?”
“Why?” asked Larry in surprise.
“I mean, so long as it goes into the family,” said Sir John, and the colour came to the girl’s face.
“There’s a great deal in that, Sir John,” she said, “and now I am going to take him home.”
That night, after she had gone to bed, and Larry sat before his little fire, his bright brier between his teeth and his mind at peace, Sunny came in to him, bearing an armful of laundry.
“Two of your collars are missing, sir.”
“And the man who wears the collars was nearly missing, Sunny,” chuckled Larry. “Do you know, one of the first things I thought about in that infernal place was whether you’d get the news in time to stop the papers.”
“I could have always sent them back, sir,” said Sunny gravely.
“You’re a cheerful soul,” said Larry. “Well were you named Sunny! And Sunny,” he said, “I want to tell you that I’m going to be married.”
“Yes, sir,” said Sunny, and his brows knit in thought.
“Well?” said Larry.
“Well, sir,” said Sunny slowly, “I think you’ll want some new socks. They dress very smartly at Monte Carlo.”
“By Jove!” said Larry, and then his face fell. “We can’t go to Monte Carlo in the summer, you silly ass. It would be too hot. No, I’m going to Scotland for—for—after I’m married.”
Sunny was interested.
“Then you’ll be wanting a kilt, sir,” he said.
CHAPTER XLV.
THREE CIGARETTES
Two months later, Dr. Judd sat on the edge of a very small bed and smoked three cigarettes, one after the other. It was a rainy morning, and the square of glass which gave light to the cell seemed to collect all the grayness and drabness of the day and transmute the faded light of heaven into a lead.
The doctor smoked luxuriously, for he had not tasted a cigarette for the greater part of two months. Presently the door of the cell opened, and Larry came in. Judd jumped up to his feet and greeted the visitor with a smile.
“It’s awfully good of you to come, Holt,” he said. “I intended saying nothing, but in the circumstances it seems to me only fair to a man of your position, who has put in such a large amount of earnest and excellent work, that you should know the truth.”
He was altogether sincere: Larry knew that.
“My brother David and I—and this you will understand—were on the most affectionate terms from our early childhood. David was my care and my responsibility, and he was also my joy. We had both been left by our mother at a very early age, and our father was an eccentric gentleman who had very little use for children. So we grew up and went to the same public school and to the University together, and I think I am right in saying that we were wholly sufficient for one another. I had an admiration and a love for David beyond anything that is human,” said the doctor, lowering his voice and looking down.
Larry nodded. He had recognized this quality in the two men.
“I hope you will not think that I owe you a grudge because you killed David,” he said. “Far from it. I recognize the inevitability, and in my heart I know that nothing could have saved David. He died as he would have wished; and in some respects I am very glad for all that has happened. At the trial I made every effort to prove to the judge and the jury that I was perfectly sane, and your evidence helped to secure the conviction which I knew was inevitable. I thank you for it. As I say——” he went back to the story of his early life, and told stories of the childhood of himself and his brother.
“When my father died,” he went on, “he left us the Greenwich Insurance Company, a small impoverished concern which was then on the verge of bankruptcy. I can safely and honestly say that I have never respected the sanctity of human life. To me a human being is like any other animal—a kind of dumb Lew,” he explained easily, and Larry could hardly restrain a shudder at the light-hearted way he referred to this human wreck.
“I tell you that before I go any further, lest you expect anything in the shape of an apologetic attitude on my part. If you do, you will be disappointed. The business to which my brother and I succeeded was bankrupt, and I think we got our first idea for the subsequent operations when we had to pay out a risk which had been taken by my eccentric father and a risk which he should never have undertaken.
“The idea of the scheme was partly mine and partly David’s. We began our experiments three months later, when we drowned a man, whose name I need not tell you, since it would serve no useful purpose and no person is under suspicion for his death. We had insured him in our own office—a very simple process—without his being any the wiser. I myself had signed the medical report, and David, who was a clever draughtsman, in addition to being a brilliant engineer—the career for which he was trained—signed all the necessary forms in his name. We chose the man carefully. He was one who had no friends and was regarded as being something of a recluse. The policy was made payable in favour of a fictitious name which my brother had taken in Scotland, where he had furnished a small house and where he lived for the purposes of collection.
“We made a large sum of money by this death, for we had reinsured the life and there was little to do but to collect from the underwriters. My brother was always something of a poet, and when he was at Oxford he wrote two or three plays, which the managers of the London theatres rejected. I need hardly tell you,” he said with the utmost gravity, “that they were wonderful plays, though not, of course, as good as those I produced later at the Macready Theatre.”
“The Macready was your property, was it not?” said Larry, and the doctor inclined his head.
“I bought it some time ago for the purpose of producing dear David’s dramas,” he said. “It was the one thing for which I lived: to establish David’s name. He had very early on taken the name of Dearborn, and it is curious that you had not compared the name that appeared on the playbills six years ago with the Rev. John Dearborn.”
“They were compared,” said Larry, “and our conclusions were drawn, but not until a late stage in the investigations.”
“Our next experiment was on a man named—well, I need not give this name, either,” he said. “We had to wait a reasonable time before we bled the underwriters. And here occurred an unfortunate thing. One of our clerks discovered that the person to whom the money was paid was my brother. He found it out by the veriest accident, and began to blackmail David, and finally, fearing the consequence of this line of action, he stole a considerable sum of money from the office and went to France. David followed him and shot him in Montpellier. You know that part of the story very well, Mr. Holt,” he said with a good-humoured smile. “Flash Fred saw the act committed, and lived on me for years, but only because he never accepted an invitation to dinner in my house,” he added with a little smile.
“And now I come to the Stuart case. David, who did a great deal of investigating of his own, had, as you know, disappeared as the result of Flash Fred’s recognition. We gave him a very handsome funeral, and——” He hesitated.
“And the body was the brother of Lew,” said Larry quietly.
“Quite right,” agreed the doctor. “He was an awkward man, and he—had to go! The whole thing had been simplified by now,” he explained. “My brother had built our beautiful house, and the death chamber with its water, its pump, and its ventilator, had been created by his genius. It was my idea that we should buy up Todd’s Home, and curiously enough I had completed the sale before it became necessary for dear David to disappear. Mr. Grogan has not told you, in all probability, that we sought by every means in our power to induce him to come to the Macready Theatre to see a representation of one of my brother’s dramas. He saved himself, not by any superhuman cleverness, but because he had the low cunning of the rat which walks around the cage of a trap, knowing that the trap is there, yet unable to realize just how it works.
“I will return to Stuart,” he said. “We had laid our plans when Stuart came into the box, and our plans did not include any injury to him whilst he was in the theatre, because we thought it would be a simple matter to persuade him to pass through the fire door into the car which was waiting in the private road which is the property and stands upon the grounds of the theatre.
“Stuart came. My brother, of course, was not there, though he was near enough at hand if I wanted him. Boxes A, B, and C were never let to the public, by the way. To our surprise he came in the most exalted mood, and told us that he had discovered a daughter. And then, for the first time, we knew that he was not an obscure stranger, but a very rich man. We took him back to the house and he went willingly, and there we had a discussion, dear David and I, as to what should be done. We came to the conclusion that there was nothing definite to be secured from this man if we let him live, and it was very necessary, indeed vitally necessary, that money should come in at once. I had spent a great deal of money, some hundred thousand pounds,” he said airily as he lit his second cigarette, “on art treasures, and another hundred thousand upon the theatre, and we were being pressed very hard. We decided that Stuart should go.”
He puffed at his cigarette and blew a ring to the ceiling.
“He showed fight,” he said briefly. “By the way, I have reason to believe that one of the cuff-links which were torn off my shirt in that struggle was retrieved by you, Mr. Holt. Where did you find it?”
“In the dead man’s hand,” said Larry, and Dr. Judd nodded.
“I was afraid I had not been very thorough,” he said, “but I am relieved, because I thought that David was to blame—David was careless in some matters.
“He had told us, had Stuart, all about his charwoman, had given us her address; and there and then we decided to find this Clarissa and marry her to someone.” He shrugged his shoulders. “It did not matter whom, so long as we could first of all prove her birth and then control her money. The next day my brother went to confirm the man’s story, but he found difficulty. The woman in charge of the nursing home—it was a converted farm, if you remember, where Mrs. Stuart died—had disappeared. And even the offer of a reward did not produce any results. We had no difficulty in finding and capturing the charwoman. Blind Jake, who was a faithful servant of ours—and nobody regrets his death more than myself, but I also realize that it was necessary, or had the appearance of necessity—Blind Jake, I say, hurried her away, and from the information she was able to supply us with, I could trace Clarissa Stuart as Diana Ward. I might add, for your information,” he said, addressing Holt, “that the inquiries did not take more than half a day.”
“There is one question I should like to ask you, doctor,” said Larry quietly. “The lift accident was arranged by whom?”
“By David,” said the doctor with a little smile, as though he were amused at something. “David was on the floor above, and it was David who dropped things on your head. They didn’t reach your head, of course, which was unfortunate. Then he had an easy exit along the roof to the next building, and I never admired you so much as when you refrained from going up those steps left so invitingly under the open trap-door. You would have come down very quickly,” he added significantly. “And that, gentlemen, really concludes my story.” And he took up the third cigarette, for the second had been smoked very vigorously.
“Why did you spare Lew?” asked Larry. “He was one of your helpers and knew your secrets.”
“I was prepared to spare almost anybody unless my life was endangered,” said Dr. Judd. “Certainly I did not want to find all my good plans tumbling to the ground through the death of some wretched beggar who was quite harmless. I only killed when it was necessary or profitable,” he said. “Blind Jake had his own vendettas, and his attempt upon Fanny Weldon was a purely private affair in which we were not interested.”
A man came in through the door of the cell, a short, stocky man who was bareheaded, and Dr. Judd took one long whiff of his cigarette, dropped it on the floor of the cell and put his foot upon it.
“The executioner, I presume?” he said pleasantly, and turned round, putting his hands behind him.
The stocky man strapped him tight, and the white-robed clergyman, whose ministrations he had refused and who was waiting outside the cell door, came in and walked slowly by the doctor’s side.
And so he went out of sight of Larry, who waited behind. He saw the broad shoulders for the last time as they passed through the narrow door leading from the prison hall to the exercise yard, and he waited, feeling inexpressibly and unaccountably sad.
A minute passed, and then there was a crash that came like thunder to his ears and made him start. It was the crash of the falling death-trap. Dr. Judd had met his brother.
[The End]
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
The Ward, Lock & Co. (1924) edition was consulted for many of the changes listed below.
Minor spelling inconsistencies (e.g. boarding-house/boarding house, cigar-case/cigar case, flash-lamp/flash lamp, etc.) have been preserved.
Alterations to the text:
Punctuation: a few missing/invisible periods and commas, and some quotation mark pairings.
[Chapter II]
Change “it is awfully good of you to forgo you holiday” to your.
“Reguarly as the clock he’d return after two hours’ absence” to Regularly.
[Chapter III]
“He looked around for some receptacle, and saw, a cupboard in the wall” delete the second comma.
[Chapter VIII]
“He frowned. It was an absnrd idea” to absurd.
[Chapter XII]
“She turned round with, an exclamation of fright.” delete the comma.
(“Your men know all about him, Mr. Holt.” Fanny hesitated. “He’s) change the first period to a comma.
[Chapter XX]
“disreputable scoundrel. Have you see him lately?” to seen.
“He laughed, and he had a very hearty and pleasnat laugh” to pleasant
[Chapter XXI]
(“Did this lady give any address”) add question mark.
[Chapter XXVI]
“he said, and she queezed his arm affectionately” to squeezed.
[Chapter XXVII]
“So that he shall not read Braile or write Braille” to Braille.
[Chapter XXVIII]
“There were two peple whom he desired greatly to meet.” to people.
[Chapter XXIX]
“though fortuately I hadn’t a gun in my possession” to fortunately.
[Chapter XXXII]
“and spends a lots of money in charity” to lot.
[Chapter XXXIV]
“The joy of accomplishment set his heat beating faster” to heart.
[CHAPTER XXXVI]
(“I wondered what door his tumbler lock was on,”) to this.
[Chapter XXXVIII]
“He looked down at the bag and the writing-case. and there was regret” change the period to a comma.
[Chapter XXXIX]
(“They must have had this scheme in mind for some time, for a month before David’s death. Dr. Judd had completed the purchase of Todd’s Home.) delete the period after death.
[Chapter XLIV]
(“David! It frightens, me. Tell him not to!”) delete the comma.
[Chapter XLV]
“I was prepared to spare almost anybody unlesss my life” to unless.
[End of text]