Strange sights are to be seen in London.
At five minutes to nine a.m. on the first day of the year seven vast crowds stood before the seven principal entrances to Hugo's; seven crowds of immortal souls enclosed in the bodies of women. They meant to begin the year well by an honest attempt to get something for nothing. It was a cold, dank, raw, and formidable morning; Hugo's tessellated pavements were covered with moisture, and, moreover, day had not yet conquered night. But the seven crowds, growing larger each moment, recked nothing of these inconveniences. They waited stolidly, silently, in a suppressed and dangerous fever, as besiegers await the signal for an attack. Between the various entrances, on the three façades of the establishment, ran the long lines of windows dressed with all the materials for happiness, and behind these ramparts of materials could be glimpsed Hugo's assistants moving about in anxious expectation under the electric lights, which burned red in the foggy gloom. Over every portal was a purple warning: 'Beware of pickpockets, male and female.' No possible male pickpockets, however, were visible to the eye; perhaps they were disguised as ladies. The seven crowds wedged themselves closer and closer, clutched tighter and tighter their purses, and stared at the golden commissionaires through the glass doors with a glance more and more ferocious. Then suddenly something went off with a boom; it was the first stroke of the great Hugo clock under the dome. Six pairs of double doors opened simultaneously, six pairs of golden commissionaires were overthrown like ninepins, and in a fraction of time six companies of determined and remorseless women had swept like Prussian cavalry into the interior of the doomed edifice.
But the seventh crowd was left on the pavement, for the seventh pair of doors had not opened. And this was the more extraordinary in that the seventh crowd was the largest crowd, and stood before the entrance nearest to the principal scene of the day's operations. Instantly the world became aware that Hugo's management was less perfect than usual, and people recalled incidents in his business during the previous four months which had not been to his credit. The seventh crowd was staggered, furious, and homicidal. If glances could have killed the impassive pair of golden commissionaires behind the seventh portal, they would certainly have fallen down dead. If the glass of the seventh portal had not been set in small squares of immense thickness, it would have been shattered to bits, and the stronghold forced. Many women cried out that justice had come to an end in England, for was it not an elementary principle of justice that all doors should open together? A few women, more practical, and near the edge of the enraged horde, slipped away to other entrances. One woman fainted, but she was held upright by the press, and as no one paid the slightest attention to her she rapidly came to. Then at length a tall gentleman in a beautiful frock-coat was seen to be expostulating sternly with the seventh pair of golden commissionaires; the recalcitant doors flew open, and the beautiful frock-coat was hurled violently against a marble pillar for its pains. Just as the seventh regiment was disappearing to join in the sack and loot, a young and pretty girl drove up in a hansom, threw the driver a shilling (which the driver contemplated with a scorn too deep for words), and joined the tail of the regiment.
'I knew I should do it,' she said to herself, 'and Alb said I shouldn't.'
In another moment Hugo's was a raging sea of petticoats. In half an hour the doors had to be shut and locked, and new crowds formed on the tessellated pavements; Hugo's was full.
Hugo's was full!
For three days past Hugo had bought whole pages of every daily paper in London, in order to break gently to the public the tremendous fact that his annual sale would commence on New Year's Day, and the still more tremendous fact that it would close on the third of January. There are only three genuine annual sales in the Metropolis. One is Hugo's, another happens in Tottenham Court Road, and the third—but why disclose the situation of the third, since all persons from Putney to Peckham Rise who are worthy to know it, know it? Hugo's was naturally the greatest, the largest, the most exciting, the most marvellous, the most powerful in its appeal to the most powerful of human instincts—the instinct to get half a crown's worth of value for two shillings. In earlier years Hugo had made his annual sale prodigious and incredible, with no thought of profit, merely for the pleasure of the affair. But he found that the more he offered to the public the more he received from them, and that it was practically impossible to lose money by giving things away. This is, of course, a fundamental axiom of commerce. And now Hugo's annual sale was to be more astonishing than ever; some said that he meant at any cost to efface the memory of those discreditable incidents before mentioned. Decidedly, many of the advertised bargains were remarkable in the highest degree. There was, for example, the 'fine silvered fox-stole, with real brush at each end,' at a guinea. Every woman who can tell a silvered fox-stole from a cock's-feather boa is aware that a silvered fox-stole simply cannot be sold for a guinea. Yet Hugo had announced that he would sell two thousand of them at that price, not to mention muffs to match at the same figure. And there was the famous 'Incroyable' corset, white coutille, with wide belted band round hips, double belt to buckle at sides, cut low—' Enough! Further indiscretions of description are not necessary to show that eighteen and nine is the lowest price at which a reasonable creature could hope to obtain the 'Incroyable' corset. But Hugo's price was twelve and eleven. And the whole-page advertisements were a solid blazing mass of such jewels.
The young and pretty girl who had known that she would 'do it' hastened with assured steps, and as quickly as the jostling multitudes would allow, to the fur department. She was in pursuit of one of the silvered fox-stoles with real brush at each end. She had her husband's permission—nay, his command—to purchase a silvered fox-stole at a guinea—if she could. On the way to her goal she encountered by chance Simon Shawn, and it occurred that a temporary block compelled her to halt before him. The two gazed at each other, and Simon looked away, flushing. It was plain that, though acquainted, they were not on speaking terms. The fact was, that their silence covered a domestic drama—a drama which had arisen as the consequence of a great human truth—namely, that even detectives will marry.
It will be remembered that on a certain morning in July, after Hugo had finished pasting a notice on a mirror in one of the common rooms, in the presence of a pink-aproned waitress, Albert Shawn entered, and kissed the pink-aproned waitress. So far as possible, whom Albert Shawn kissed he married, and he had married the waitress just the week before Christmas, and this was she. Simon had objected sternly to the mésalliance. It seemed shocking to Simon that a rising detective should marry a girl who waited on shop-girls. Hence the drama. Hugo had positively refused to allow an open quarrel between the brothers, because of its inconvenience to himself, but he could not prevent a quarrel between Simon and Lily—such was her name. They met now for the first time since the marriage, and Lily's demeanour may be imagined. She gazed through Simon as though he did not exist, and passed magnificently onwards as soon as the throng permitted. She was Mrs. Albert Shawn, as neat as ninepence, as smart and pert as a French maid out for the day. She drove in hansoms, and she had a five-pound note in her pocket.
Albert had been granted two weeks' vacation for his honeymoon, and he ought to have resumed his duties of detection that morning. The honeymoon, however, had lasted only nine days, and the remaining five days of the period had been spent by him in some secret affair of his own, an affair which had ended in an accident to his left foot, so that he could not walk. The consequence was that, on this day of all days, Hugo's was deprived of his services. Lily was, perhaps, not altogether sorry for the catastrophe which kept him a prisoner in the nest-like home in Radipole Road, for it had resulted in this excursion of hers to the sale. Albert had bidden her to go to buy a stole and other things, to keep her eyes open, and to report to Hugo in person if she observed anything queer. He had even given her a pass which would ensure her immediate admittance to any of Hugo's private lairs. Therefore, Lily felt extremely important, extremely like a detective's wife. She knew that Albert trusted her, and she was very proud that she had not asked him any questions concerning a matter exasperatingly mysterious. Albert had taught her that a detective's wife should crucify curiosity.
She fought her way to a counter in the fur department.
'The guinea stoles?' she inquired from a shopwalker.
'I—I beg pardon, miss,' said the shopwalker.
'Madam,' Lily corrected him. 'I want one of those silvered fox-stoles advertised at a guinea.'
'You'll probably find them over there, madam,' said the shopwalker, pointing.
'Aren't you sure?' she asked tartly. 'I don't want to struggle across there and then find they're somewhere else.'
The shopwalker turned his back on her.
'Well, I never!' she exclaimed to herself, and decided that Albert should avenge her.
Then, behind the counter, she saw a girl whom she used to serve with a glass of milk every morning.
'Oh, Miss Lawton,' she cried, as an equal to an equal, 'can you tell me where the stoles are to be found?'
'Probably over there, Mrs. Shawn,' said Miss Lawton kindly, nodding the greeting she had no time to utter.
So Lily got away from the counter, plunged into a chartless sea of customers, and eventually emerged in the quarter which had been indicated.
'All sold out, miss!'
Such was the blunt answer to her demand for a silvered fox-stole.
'Don't talk to me like that!' said Mrs. Albert Shawn. 'It isn't above half-past nine on the first morning of the sale, and you advertised two thousand of them.'
'Sorry, miss. All sold out,' repeated the second shopwalker.
'I shall report this to Mr. Hugo. Do you know who I am? I'm—'
And the second shopwalker also turned his back.
Could these things be happening at Hugo's, at Hugo's, so famous for the courtesy, the long patience, the indestructible politeness of its well-paid employés? And could Hugo have descended to the trickeries of the eleven-pence-halfpenny draper, who proclaimed non-existent bargains to lure the unwary into his shop? Lily might have wondered if she was not dreaming, but she was far too practical ever to be in the least doubt as to whether she was asleep or awake. And now she perceived that scores of angry women about her were equally disappointed by the disgraceful absence of those stoles. The department, misty, stuffy, and noisy, had the air of being the scene of an insurrection. One lady was informing the public generally that she had demanded a guinea stole at three minutes past nine, and had been put off with a monstrous excuse. And then a newspaper reporter appeared, and began to take notes. The din increased, though shopwalkers said less and less, and the chances seemed in favour of the insurrection becoming a riot. Other admirable bargains in furs were indubitably to be had—muffs, for example—and the cashiers were busy; but nothing could atone for the famine of stoles.
Lily had a suspicion that Albert would have wished her to report these singular circumstances to Hugo at once. But she dismissed the suspicion, because she passionately desired an 'Incroyable' corset at twelve and eleven, and she feared lest the corsets might have vanished as strangely as the stoles. In ten minutes, breathless, she had reached the corset department, demanded an 'Incroyable' of the correct size, and bought it. There was no dissatisfaction in the corset department.
'Shall we send it, miss?'
'Madam,' said Lily proudly. 'No, I'll take it.'
'Yes, madam.'
At the cash desk (No. 56) she had to wait her turn in a disorderly queue before she could tender the bill and her five-pound note. Customers pressed round her on all sides as she put down the note and peered through the wire network into the interior of the desk.
'Next, please,' said the cashier sharply, after a moment.
'My change,' demanded Lily.
'You have had it, madam.'
'Oh,' said Lily, 'I have had it, have I? Now, none of your nonsense, young man! Do you know who I am? I'm Mrs. Albert Shawn.'
'Mr. Randall,' the cashier called out coldly, and a grave and gigantic shopwalker appeared who knew not the name of Albert Shawn, and who firmly told Mrs. Shawn that if she wished to make a complaint she must make it at the Central Inquiry Office, ground-floor, Department 1A.
Lily had been brazenly robbed at Hugo's by an employé of Hugo! She was elbowed away by other women apparently anxious to be robbed. She wanted to cry, but suddenly remembering her identity, and her pass to the presence of Hugo, she threw up her head and marched off through the crowds.
She had not proceeded twenty yards before she was stopped by a group of persons round a policeman—a policeman obviously called in from Sloane Street. A stout woman of lady-like appearance had been arrested on a charge of attempted pocket-picking. An accusatory shopwalker charged her, and she replied warmly that she was Lady Brice (née Kentucky-Webster), the American wife of the well-known philanthropist, and that her carriage was waiting outside. The policeman and the shopwalker smiled. It was so easy to be the wife of a well-known philanthropist, and in these days all the best pickpockets had their carriages waiting outside.
'I know this lady by sight,' said Lily. 'She visited the common-rooms last year to see the arrangements, with Mr. Hugo, and he called her Lady Brice, and I can tell you he'll be very angry with you.'
'And who are you, my young friend?' said the policeman sceptically, and threateningly.
'I'm—'
The formula proved useless. Lady Brice (née Kentucky-Webster) was led off in all her vast speechless, outraged impeccability, and poor little Lily was glad to escape with her freedom and the memory of Lady Brice's grateful bow.
She ran, gliding in and out between the knots of visitors, until she was stopped by a pair of doors being suddenly shut and fastened in her face. The reason for the obstruction was plain. Those doors admitted to the blouse department, and the blouse department, as Lily could see through the diamond panes, was a surging sea of bargain-hunters, amid which shopwalkers stood up like light-houses, while the girls behind the counters trembled in fear of being washed away. Discipline, order, management, had ceased to exist at Hugo's.
Mrs. Shawn turned to seek another route, but already dozens of women were upon her, and she could not retire. The crowd of candidates for admission to the blouse department swelled till it filled the gallery between that department and its neighbour. Then someone cried out for air, and someone else protested that the doors at the other end of the short gallery had also been shut. Lily, whose manifold misfortunes had not quenched her interest in the 'Incroyable' corset, opened her parcel, and found that the corset was not an 'Incroyable' at all, but an inferior substitute, with no proper belted band, and of a shape to startle even a Brighton bathing-woman! The change must have been effected by the assistant in making up the parcel.
'Well!'
She could say no more, and think no more, than this 'Well!'
And, moreover, the condition of the packed gallery soon caused her to forget even the final swindle of the corset. The air had rapidly become exhausted. Women clutched at each other; women rapped frenziedly against the heavy, glazed doors; women screamed. It was the Black Hole of Calcutta over again, and yet no one in the blouse department seemed to notice the signals of distress. Lily felt the perspiration on her brow and chin, and then she knew that she, too, must scream and clutch; and she cried out, and the pressure which forced her against the door grew more and more terrible.... She had dropped the corset.... She murmured feebly 'Alb—'.... She began to dream queer dreams and to see strange lights.... And then something gave way with a crash, and she fell forward, and regiments of horses trampled over her, and at last all living things receded from her, and she was in the midst of a great silence. And then even the silence was gone, and there was nothing.
So ended the first part of Lily's adventures at Hugo's infamous annual sale.
When she recovered perfect consciousness, she was in the dome. She knew it was the dome because Albert had once, at her urgent request, taken her surreptitiously to see it. Simon was standing over her, as sympathetic as the most exigent sister-in-law could wish, and the great Shawn family feud had expired.
In two minutes she was her intensely practical self again. In five minutes she had acquainted Simon with all her experiences; they were but the complement of what he himself had witnessed.
The sense of a mysterious calamity over-hanging Hugo's, and the sense of the shame which had already disgraced Hugo's, pressed heavily on both of them. They knew that only one man could retrieve what had been lost and avert irreparable disaster. Their faith in that man was undiminished, and Simon at least was sure that he had been victimized by some immense conspiracy.
'Why don't you find Mr. Hugo?' Lily demanded.
'I've looked everywhere. A letter was brought up to him about an hour ago, and he went off instantly.'
'And where's the letter?'
'I expect it's in that drawer, where he throws all his private letters,' said Simon, pointing to a drawer in the big writing-table on the opposite side of the room from the piano.
'Is it locked—the drawer?'
'No.'
'Then open it.'
'It's the governor's private drawer,' said Simon. 'I've never—'
'Stuff!' Lily exclaimed, and she opened the drawer and drew out the topmost letter.
It was on blue paper.
'Yes, that's it,' said Simon. 'The envelope was blue, I remember.'
'He must be in the Safe Deposit,' said Lily, perusing the letter with flying glance.
And Simon, at length sufficiently emboldened, seized the letter and read:
'SIR,
'Mr. Polycarp has just been here, and accidentally left behind him keys of his vault, including safe of late Mr. Francis Tudor, etc. In these peculiar circumstances I shall be glad to know what I am to do.
'Yours respectfully,
'H. BROWN,
'Head Guardian,
'Hugo's Safe Deposit.'
'What on earth can Brown be thinking about?' muttered Simon. 'Hadn't he got enough gumption to send a messenger after Mr. Polycarp, without troubling the governor? He'll catch it.'
'Never mind that,' said Lily sharply. 'Run down to the Safe Deposit. Run, Simon.'
It was as though a delay of minutes might mean ruin. Who could say what was even then happening in the disorganized and masterless departments?
The Safe Deposit at Hugo's was perhaps the most wonderful of all the departments. Until Hugo thought of it, and paid a trinity of European experts to design and devise it, there had existed no such thing as an absolutely impregnable asylum for valuables. In Dakota a strong-room alleged to be impregnable had been approached underground, tunnelled, mined, and emptied by thieves with imagination. In the North of England a safe, which its inventor had defied the whole universe of crime to open, had been rifled by the aid of so simple a dodge as duplicate keys. Even in Tottenham Court Road a couple of ingenious persons had burnt a hole in a guaranteed safe by means of common gas at three and threepence per thousand cubic feet. These surprises could not occur at Hugo's. His Safe Deposit really was what it pretended to be. All contingencies were provided for. It was the final retort of virtue to vice.
You approached it by a door of quite ordinary appearance (no one cares to be seen leaving what is obviously a safe deposit), and you signed your name before entering a lift. You descended forty feet below the surface of the earth, gave a password on emerging from the lift, traversed a corridor, and at length stood in front of the sole entrance to the Safe Deposit. A guardian, when you had signed your name again, unlocked three unpickable, incombustible, and gunpowder-proof locks in a massive steel door, and you were admitted, assuming always that the hour was between nine and six. Out of hours and on Saturday after-noons and on Sundays a time-lock rendered it utterly impossible for any person whatever to turn any key in the Safe Deposit. Once the lock was set, Hugo himself could not have entered, not even to save the British Empire from instant destruction, until the time-lock had run its course.
You found yourself in an electrically lighted world of passages built in flashing steel, with floors of steel and ceilings of steel—a world where the temperature was always 65°. Every passage was separated from every other passage by steel grilles, and at intervals uniformed and gigantic officials wandered about with impassive, haughty faces—faces that indicated a sublime confidence in the safety of the multifarious riches committed to their care. You might have guessed yourself in the fell grip of the Inquisition. As a fact, you were in something far more fell. You were in a vast chamber of steel, and that chamber was itself enclosed on all sides by three feet of solid concrete. No thief could tunnel or mine you without first getting through the District Railway on the one hand, or the main drainage system of London on the other. No thief could rifle you by means of duplicate keys, for no vault and no safe could be opened except in the presence of the head guardian, who possessed a key without which the renter's key was useless. No tricks could be played with the gas, because there was no gas, and the electric light could only be turned off or on from the top of the lift-well.
Now, it was a singular thing that when Simon Shawn, having proved his identity and his mission at the lift, arrived at the entrance to the Safe Deposit, he discovered the great steel door ajar, and no door-guardian in the leather chair where a door-guardian always sat. This condition of affairs did not affect the essential impregnability of any individual vault or safe, but, nevertheless, it was singular.
Simon walked straight in.
'There's no one at the door,' he said to the patrol, whom he met in the main passage. 'I want to see Mr. Hugo at once. He's down here somewhere, or he's been here.'
'Yes, Mr. Shawn,' said the patrol politely; 'I did see Mr. Hugo here about an hour or so ago. I'll ask Mr. Brown. Will you step into the waiting-room?'
Half-way along the main corridor was a large room, whose steel walls were masked by tapestries, where renters could examine their treasures on marble tables. It was empty when Simon went in. The patrol carefully closed the door on him, and then in a moment came back to say that Mr. Brown was not in his office, and had probably gone out to lunch, the hour being noon.
'Where did you see Mr. Hugo?' Simon asked, hurrying out of the room in a state of considerable agitation.
'I saw him just here, sir,' said the patrol, turning down a short side corridor—the grille was unfastened—and stopping before a door numbered thirty-nine. 'He was talking to Mr. Brown, and the door of the vault was open.'
'That must be Mr. Polycarp's vault,' Simon observed; and then he started, and put his ear against the door. 'Listen!' he exclaimed to the patrol. 'Can't you hear anything inside?'
And the patrol also put his ear to the steel face of the door.
'I seem to hear a faint knocking, but it's that faint as you scarcely can hear it. There! it's stopped.'
'He is inside,' Shawn whispered.
'Who's inside?'
'Mr. Hugo.'
'It's God help him, then,' said the patrol, 'if he's there long. There's no ventilation, Mr. Shawn. We'd better telephone for Mr. Polycarp. The other key will be in the key-safe. I can get it. But how do you make out, sir, that Mr. Hugo can be in there? The vault could only be locked by Mr. Polycarp and Mr. Brown together, and surely they couldn't both—'
'Mr. Polycarp left his keys behind by accident. He had gone before Mr. Hugo came down.'
'There's been no Mr. Polycarp here this morning,' said the patrol a minute later. 'I've looked at the signature-book. I thought it was queer I hadn't seen him. And, what's more, that isn't Mr. Polycarp's vault at all. Mr. Polycarp's vault is No. 37. This vault has been empty for several weeks.'
'Then you have both the keys?' Simon demanded quickly.
'No, sir. It's very strange. There's only one key of No. 39 in the key-safe, and it's the renter's key.'
'Then Mr. Brown must have the other.'
'I expect so. But he ought not to have. It's against rules,' said the patrol. 'I know where he takes his lunch. I'll send for him.'
Simon put his ear again to the face of the door. The faint knocking had ceased, but after a few seconds it recommenced.
'And suppose you don't find Mr. Brown?' he queried, still listening.
'Then that vault can't be opened. But never you fear, Mr. Shawn. I'll have him here in three minutes. It's funny as he should have left anybody in there by accident—and Mr. Hugo of all people in this blessed world....'
The patrol's accents died away as he passed down the main corridor.
Within the next half-hour Simon, who had the rare virtue of being honest with himself, was freely admitting, in the privacy of his own mind, that the crisis had got beyond his power to grapple with it, and he had begun to fear complications more dreadful than he dared to put into words. For the patrol had failed to find Mr. Brown. Mr. Brown, head guardian of the Safe Deposit, had disappeared. Nor was this all. A renter had come to take his belongings from a safe in the third side-passage on the left, and the sub-guardian imprisoned in that passage could not open the grille between it and the main corridor. He had his key, but the key would not turn in the glittering lock. The renter, too impatient to wait, had departed very angrily at this excess of safety. Then it was gradually discovered that every sub-guardian in every side-passage was similarly imprisoned. Not a key in the entire place would turn. The patrol rushed to the main door. The three keys had clearly been turned while the door was opened, and the shot bolts prevented the door from closing. This explained why the door was ajar, but it did not explain the absence of the doorkeeper, who had apparently followed in the footsteps of his chief, Mr. Brown.
'The time-lock! Someone must have set it!' cried the patrol to Shawn, and the two hastened to the other end of the main corridor, where the dial of the machine glistened under an electric lamp.
And all the sub-guardians stirred and grumbled in their beautiful bright cages like wrathful lions. No such scene had ever been known in that Safe Deposit or any other safe deposit before.
The patrol was right. The dial of the time-lock showed that it had been set against every lock, great and small, in the Safe Deposit, until nine a.m. the next day.
'It's all up!' the patrol said solemnly.
'Do you mean to say nothing can be done to open that vault till nine to-morrow?' Simon demanded in despair.
'Nothing. The blooming Czar couldn't manage it with all his Cossacks! No, nor Bobs either! This is a Safe Deposit, this is, and if Mr. Hugo is in that vault, it's Mr. Hugo as knows it's a Safe Deposit by now.'
A brief silence ensued, and then Simon said:
'We must telephone to the police. There's a telephone in the waiting-room, isn't there?'
The patrol admitted that there was, but his manner hinted a low opinion of the utility of the police. He stood mute while Simon Shawn told the telephone receiver what had occurred in the bowels of the earth beneath Hugo's.
'Wait a minute,' said the telephone, and then, after a pause: 'Are you there? I'm Inspector Winter.'
'That's him as has charge of all the strong-room cases,' the patrol interjected to Simon.
'I've got Mr. Jack Galpin here, as it happens,' said the telephone.
'Mr. Jack Galpin?' Simon questioned.
'He's just done eighteen months for an attempt in Lombard Street,' the patrol explained. 'I've heard of him.'
'I'll come down with him immediately in a cab,' said the telephone.
When Simon returned to the impregnable door of Vault 39 he listened in vain for a sound. Then he knocked with his pen-knife on the polished steel, and presently there was an answering signal from within—a series of scarcely perceptible irregular taps. It struck him that the irregularity of the taps formed a rhythm, and after a few seconds he recognised the rhythm of the Intermezzo from 'Cavalleria Rusticana,' which he had played for Hugo that very morning.
It was at this moment that the messenger-boy attached to the department came whistling into the steel corridors, and delivered to the patrol a small white packet, which, he said, Mr. Brown had handed to him with instructions to hand it to the patrol. He had seen Mr. Brown in a cab outside the building, and Mr. Brown had the appearance of being very ill.
The packet contained the second key of Vault 39.
'But this'll be no use till to-morrow,' was the patrol's comment, 'and by then—'
When the patrol and Simon between them had explained the mysterious and fatal situation to Mr. Jack Galpin, Mr. Jack Galpin leaned against one of the marble tables in the waiting-room, and roared with laughter.
'Well,' observed Mr. Galpin, 'he didn't have his Safe Deposit built for nothing, anyhow!'
And he laughed again.
'But he's slowly dying in there!' said Simon.
'Yes, I know,' said Mr. Galpin. 'That's what makes it such a good joke.'
'I don't see it, sir,' Simon remarked.
'Simply because your sense of humour is a bit off. What are you?'
'I am Mr. Hugo's man.'
'My respects.'
Mr. Galpin had arrived with Inspector Winter, and Inspector Winter had introduced him as knowing more about safes than any other man in England, or perhaps in Europe. After the introduction, Inspector Winter, being pressed for time, had departed. Mr. Galpin was aged about forty, and looked like an extremely successful commercial traveller. No one would have suspected that he had recently done eighteen months anywhere but in a first-class hotel; even his thin hands were white, and if his hair was a little short—well, the hair of very many respectable persons is often a little short. It appeared that he was under obligations to Inspector Winter, and anxious to oblige. The relations between distinguished law-breakers and distinguished detectives are frequently such as can only exist between artists who esteem each other. For the rest, Mr. Galpin had brought a brown bag.
'You see, the time-lock is placed so that—' began the patrol.
'Shut up!' said Mr. Galpin curtly. 'I know all that. I've got scale-plans of every Safe Deposit in London, and I decided long since that this one was too good to try. Of course, with the aid of the entire staff things might be a bit easier, but not much—not much!' he repeated scornfully. 'If I can manage a job at all, I can usually manage it alone, and in spite of the entire staff.'
'I suppose you couldn't burn the door of the vault with oxy-hydrogen?' Simon suggested.
'Yes, I could,' said Mr. Galpin; 'and with the brand of steel used here I should get through about this time to-morrow. I could blow the bally vault up with gun-cotton in something under two seconds, but no doubt your Mr. Hugo would go up with it, and then the Yard would be angry. No!'
He hummed an air, and strolled out into the main corridor to stare at the curious dial of the time-lock.
'Why not blow up the clock of the time-lock?' ventured the patrol.
'Look here!' said Mr. Galpin, 'you ought to know better than that, even if this other gent doesn't. Any violence to the clock automatically jams all the connecting levers. Stop the clock, and it's all up. Nothing but unbuilding the whole place would free the locks after that. And it would be a mighty smart firm that could unbuild this place inside a fortnight. No!' he said again. 'No gammon with the clock—unless we could make it go quicker.'
'Then there's nothing,' Simon stammered.
Mr. Galpin gazed at the young man.
'Assuming I do the job, what's the job worth?' he asked.
'It's worth anything.'
'Is it worth a hundred pounds?'
'Yes.'
'Cash?'
'Yes, I promise it. I will hand you my savings-bank book if you like.'
'I only ask because I have a sort of a notion about that clock. It's a pendulum clock, and you know how fast a clock ticks when you take the pendulum away, and the escapement can run free. It does an hour in about three minutes. Now, if I could get the pendulum out without alarming the clock ... it would be nine to-morrow morning in no time. See?'
'I see that,' said the patrol. 'I see that. But what I don't see—'
'Never mind what you don't see,' Mr. Jack Galpin murmured. 'Bring me my bag out of there. I may tell you,' he went on to Simon, 'that I thought of this scheme months ago, just as a pleasant sort of a fancy, but quite practical. It's a queer world, isn't it?'
'Here's your bag,' said the patrol.
'Now you two can just go into the waiting-room, and wait till I call you. Understand? And tell all these wild beasts round here to hold their tongues and sit tight. I haven't got to be disturbed in a job like this.... And it's a hundred pounds if I do it, mister, no more and no less, eh?'
Within exactly twenty-five minutes Mr. Galpin entered the waiting-room.
'See that?' he said, holding up a pendulum. 'That's it. You can come and look now. But I don't invite the public to see my own private melting process. Not me!'
He had burnt two holes through the half-inch plate of Bessemer steel in which the clock was enclosed, and by means of two pairs of tweezers (which must certainly have been imitated from the armoury of a dentist) he had detached the pendulum without stopping the clock. The hands of the clock could be plainly seen to move, and its ticking was furiously rapid.
Mr. Galpin made a calculation on his dazzling cuff.
'In three-quarters of an hour the clock will have run out,' he informed his audience, 'and you will be able to open any locks that you've got keys for. I shall call to-morrow morning, young man, for the swag. And don't you forget that there's only one Jack Galpin in the world. My address is 205, the Waterloo Road.'
He left, with his bag.
Simon rushed to Vault 39 to encourage the captive by continual knocking.
Then the messenger-boy, who had been despatched to obtain food for the prisoners behind the various grilles, came back with the desired food, and with a copy of the Evening Herald. The back page of the Herald bore Hugo's immense advertisement. The front page was also chiefly devoted to Hugo. It displayed headings such as: 'Shocking Scenes at a Sloane Street Sale,' 'Women Injured,' 'Customers Complain of Wholesale Swindling,' 'Scandalous Mismanagement,' 'The Hugo Safe Deposit Suddenly Closed,' 'Reported Disappearance of Mr. Hugo,' 'Is He a Lunatic?'
And when the three-quarters of an hour had expired Simon and the patrol unlocked the massive portal of Vault 39, and swung it open, fearful of what they might see within. And Hugo, pale and feeble, but alive, staggered heavily forward, and put a hand on Simon's shoulder.
'Let us get away from this,' he whispered, as if in profound mental agony.
Ignoring everything, he passed out of the impregnable Safe Deposit, with its flashing steel walls, on Simon's obedient arm.
Arrived on the ground-floor, Simon managed to avoid the busy parts of the establishment, but he happened to choose a way to Hugo's private lift which led past the service-door of the Hugo Grand Central Restaurant. And Hugo, although apparently in a sort of torpor, noticed it.
'Tea!' he ejaculated. 'If I could have some at once!'
And he directed Simon into the restaurant, and so came plump upon one of the worst scenes in the entire place. The first day of the great annual sale was closing in almost a riot, and there in the restaurant the primeval and savage instincts of the vast, angry crowd were naturally to be seen in their crudest form. The famous walnut buffet, eighty feet in length, was besieged by an army of customers, chiefly women, who were competing for food in a manner which ignored even the rudiments of politeness. It would be difficult to deny that several scores of well-dressed ladies, robbed of their self-possession and their lunch by delays and vexations and impositions in the departments, were actually fighting for food. The girls behind the buffet remained nobly at their posts, but the situation had outgrown their experience. Every now and then a crash of crockery or crystal was heard over the din of shrill voices, and occasionally a loud protest. Away from the buffet, on the fine floor of the restaurant, a few waitresses hurried distracted and aimless between the tables at which sat irate and scandalized persons who firmly believed themselves to be dying of hunger. A number of people were most obviously stealing food, not merely from the sideboards, but from their fellows. At a table near to the corner in which Hugo, shocked by the spectacle, had fallen limp into a chair, was seated an old, fierce man, who looked like a retired Indian judge, and who had somehow secured a cup of tea all to himself. A pretty young woman approached him, and deliberately snatched the cup from under his very nose—and without spilling a drop. The Indian judge sprang up, roared 'Hussy!' and knocked the table over with a prodigious racket, then proceeded to pick the table up again.
'Is it like this everywhere?' asked Hugo of Shawn.
And Shawn nodded.
'I might have foreseen,' Hugo murmured.
'I'll try to get you some tea, sir,' Shawn said, with an attempt to be cheerful.
'Don't leave me,' begged Hugo, like a sick child. 'Don't leave me.'
'Only for a moment, sir,' said Shawn, departing.
Hugo felt that he was about to swoon, that he had suffered just as much as a man could suffer, and that Fate was dropping the last straw on the camel's back. His head fell forward. He was beaten for that day by too many mysteries and too many tortures. And then he observed that the pretty young woman who had stolen the cup of tea from the Indian judge was hastening towards him with the cup of tea in one hand and several pieces of bread-and-butter in the other.
'Drink this, Mr. Hugo,' she whispered, standing over him. He hesitated. 'Drink it, I say, or must I throw it over you?'
He sipped, and sipped again, obediently.
'Good, isn't it?' she questioned.
He looked up at her. He was stronger already.
'It's very good,' he said, with conviction. 'Now a bit of bread-and-butter. Thanks.' Yes, the excellence and power of the Hugo tea was not to be denied, and he was deeply glad in that moment that he owned his private plantations in Ceylon. 'Who are you, may I ask?' he demanded of his rescuer.
'If you please, sir, I'm Albert's wife.'
'Albert?'
'Albert Shawn, your detective, sir.'
'Of course you are!'
'You gave us a bedroom suite for a wedding present, sir.'
'Of course I did! By the way, where's Albert?'
'He's had an accident to his foot, and couldn't come to-day. You're less pale than you were, sir. Take this other piece.'
Then Simon returned, empty-handed, and Lily's eye indicated to him her real opinion of the value of a male in a crisis. She asked no questions concerning the events which had ended in Hugo's collapse. She merely dealt with the collapse, and in the intervals of dealing with it she explained to Simon how she had waited and waited in the dome, and then descended and tried in vain to enter the Safe Deposit, and been insulted by the messenger-boy, and had finally drifted to the restaurant, where she had caught sight of Hugo and himself, and guessed immediately that something in the highest degree unusual had occurred.
'Come,' said Hugo at last, in curt command, 'I am better.'
He had recovered. He was Hugo again. And Simon was once more nothing but his body servant, and Lily nothing but an ex-waitress who had married rather well. He thanked Lily, and told her to go and look after her husband as well as she had looked after him.
In the dome Simon ventured to show him the Evening Herald. And, having read it, Hugo nodded his head and pressed his lips together. He had ordered champagne and sandwiches, and was consuming them, at the same time opening a series of yellow envelopes which lay on a table. These latter were reports from his detective corps, which had accumulated during the day.
'Get a sheet of plain paper,' he said to Simon, 'and write this letter. Are you ready? Yes, it will do in pencil; I even prefer it in pencil.
'"DEAR SIR,
'"I have reason to think that you may be interested in some extraordinary information which I have in my possession concerning Camilla Tudor, who is supposed to have been buried at Brompton Cemetery in July last year. If I am right, perhaps you will accompany the bearer to my rooms. At present I will not disclose my name.
'"Yours, etc."
'Put any initials you like. Address it to Louis Ravengar, Esquire. Now listen to me. Go down to the auto garage, and choose a good man to take the note instantly; a second man must go with him. If they bring back Ravengar, he is to be taken to No. 6, Blair Street, shown upstairs, and brought along the bridge-passage into the building. It will be quite dark, and he will never guess. If necessary, he must be brought to me by force, once he is inside. Have two or three porters in attendance to see to that. But if it's managed properly, he'll come without a suspicion, and he'll be finely surprised when he finds that the long passage ends in just this room. Come back to me as soon as you've attended to that.'
'Yes, sir,' said Simon, quite mystified, but none the less enchanted to see Hugo so actively the old Hugo.
In ten minutes he had returned, and was beginning to relate new facts which he had learnt while downstairs.
'Stop!' said Hugo. 'Don't worry me with needless details. I know enough. And don't ask me any questions. We can't hope to remedy the state of affairs to-day. Nevertheless, we can do something for to-morrow. I must have Mr. Bentley, the drapery manager, brought here before six o'clock. He must be found.'
'He is found, sir. He has shot himself in his house in Pimlico Road.'
Hugo started.
'Ah!' was all he said at first. He added dryly: 'Good! And Brown?'
'I have no news of him, sir. He's vanished.'
'Telephone down to the press department that Mr. Aked must come up to see me at seven o'clock precisely, and, in the meantime, he must secure an extra half-page in all to-morrow's papers.'
'Yes, sir.'
'And after closing-time the entire staff must assemble, the men in the carpet-rooms, and the women in the central restaurant—or what's left of it. I shall speak to them. Have notices put in the common-rooms.'
'Yes, sir.'
'And send me all the buyers from the drapery department. They must go round and buy every silvered fox-stole in London to-night, at no matter what price.'
'Certainly, sir.'
'And telephone to Y.Z. that I shall be down there as soon as I can about these things.'
He touched the pile of yellow envelopes. Y.Z. was the name always given to the detectives' private room.
'Precisely, sir.'
'That's all.'
Simon Shawn gathered that his master had a very definite clue to the origin of the unique and fatal events of that day, and that all dark places were about to be made light with a blinding light.
'Ravengar, what a fool you are!'
The dome was in darkness. Hugo, who stood concealed near the switch, turned on all the lights as soon as he had uttered this singular greeting, and stepped forward. He had decided to kill Ravengar. The desire to murder was in his heart, and in order to give all his instincts full play he had chosen a theatrical method of welcoming his victim into the fastness from which he was never to escape.
'D—n!' exclaimed Ravengar, evidently astounded to the uttermost to find himself in Hugo's dome, and in the presence of Hugo.
He sprang back to the door of the dressing-room by which he had so unsuspectingly entered.
'What a fool you are to fall into a trap so simple! No; don't try to get away. You can't. That door is locked now. And, moreover, I have a revolver here, and also a pair of handcuffs, which I shall use if I have any trouble with you.'
Ravengar gazed at his captor, irresolute. His clean-shaven upper lip seemed longer than ever, and his short gray beard and gray locks gave him an appearance of sanctimony which not even his sinister eyes could destroy. Then he sat down on a chair.
'I should like to know—' he began, trying to speak steadily.
'You would like to know,' Hugo took him up, 'why I am here alive, instead of being in that vault, suffocated. It was a pretty dodge of yours to get me down there. You counted on my curiosity about the Tudor mystery. You felt sure I should yield to the temptation. And I did yield. You were right. I was prepared to commit a breach of faith in order to satisfy that curiosity. No sooner was the door closed on me by that scoundrel Brown, and I found the vault not Polycarp's vault at all, than I knew to a certainty that you were at the bottom of the affair. So easy to make out afterwards that it was an accident! So easy to spirit Brown away! So easy to explain everything! Why, Ravengar, you intended to murder me! I saw the whole scheme in a flash. You have corrupted many of my servants to-day. But you didn't corrupt all of them. And because you didn't, because you couldn't, I am alive. You would like to know how I got out. But you will never know, Ravengar. You will die without knowing.'
Ravengar put his hands in his pockets.
'I can only assume that you are going mad, Owen,' said he. 'I have long guessed that you were. Nothing else will explain this extraordinary action of yours towards me.'
'You act well,' replied Hugo, sitting down and eyeing Ravengar critically. 'You act well. But you gave the whole show away by the tone in which you swore two minutes ago. If there is anyone mad in this room, it is yourself. Your schemes show that queer mixture of amazing ingenuity and amazing folly which is characteristic of madmen. Let us hope you are mad, at any rate.'
'My schemes!' sneered Ravengar. 'You might at least tell the madman what his schemes are.'
Hugo laughed.
'You must have been maturing the day's business quite a long time, my boyhood's companion, my floater of public companies, my pearl of financiers. Yes, decidedly parts of it were wonderfully ingenious. To sow the place with pickpockets, to get at my cashiers, my commissionaires, and my servers. To substitute your own false shopwalkers for the genuine article. To arrange for the arrest of important customers on preposterous charges of theft. To lock up a hundred women in a gallery till they nearly died. To have my best and most advertised bargains removed in the night. To deprive the restaurants of food, and to employ women to turn them upside down. To produce, as you contrived to do, a general air of pandemonium, and to ruin the discipline of over three thousand of the best-trained employés in England. All this, and much else which I do not mention, was devilish clever in its conception, and the execution of it commands my unqualified admiration. Especially having regard to the fact that you contrived not to arouse my suspicions. I may tell you that certain strange incidents which occurred in my establishment during the autumn did indeed lead me vaguely to suspect that you were at work against me, but you were sufficiently smart to put me off the track again. Let me add that until this afternoon I did not perceive that your purchase of a controlling share in the Evening Herald was only a portion of a mightier plan.'
'Really, Owen—'
'Don't waste your breath in denials. You will have none at all presently, like Bentley.'
'Bentley?' repeated Ravengar, with a slight movement.
'Yes; but we will come to Bentley in a few minutes. I have enlarged to you on your own cleverness. I must enlarge to you on your folly. What folly! What was the end of all this to be, Ravengar? I have tried to put myself in your place, and to follow your thoughts. You hate me. You think I robbed you of a fortune, and that I helped to rob you of a woman. You wished to buy my business, and add it to the roll of your companies. And I deprived you of that triumph. Your hatred of me grew and grew. Leading a solitary and narrow life, you allowed it to develop into a species of monomania. I had come out on top once too often for your peace of mind. In your opinion the world was too small to hold both of us. Accordingly, you evolved your terrific campaign. My business was to be seriously damaged. And I was to be murdered. And then you were to get the concern cheap from my executors, and to float me dead since you could not float me living. What folly, Ravengar! What stupendous folly! Even if the fanciful and grotesque scheme had succeeded as far as my death, it could not have succeeded beyond that point.'
'I don't know what you are chattering about, Owen, but you look as if you expected me to ask, "Why?" Anything to oblige you. Why?'
'You would have known the reason had you lived long enough to read the provisions of my will,' said Hugo.
'I see,' said Ravengar.
'You do,' said Hugo. 'You see, you hear, you breathe, but Bentley doesn't. Bentley has killed himself.' (Ravengar started.) 'So that if you have not my blood on your conscience, you have his. You tempted him; he fell ... and he has repented. Admit that you tempted him!'
Ravengar smiled superiorly. And then Hugo sprang forward in a sudden overmastering passion.
'Hate breeds hate,' he cried, 'and I have learnt from you how to hate. Admit that you have tried to ruin and to murder me, or, by G—! I will kill you sooner than I intended.'
He had no weapon in his hands; the revolver was in a drawer; but nevertheless Ravengar shrank from those menacing hands.
'Look here, Hugo—'
'Will you admit it? Or shall I have to—'
Their wills met in a supreme conflict.
'Oh, very well, then,' muttered Ravengar.
The conflict was over.
Hugo returned to his chair.
'Miserable cur!' he exclaimed. 'You were afraid of me. I knew I could frighten you. I would have liked to be able to admire something more than your ingenuity. Ravengar, I do believe I could have forgiven your attempt to murder me if it had not included an attempt to dishonour me at the same time. There is something simple and grand about a straightforward murder—I shall prove to you soon that I do not always regard murder as a crime—but to murder a man amid circumstances of shame, to finish him off while making him look a fool—that is the act of a—of a Ravengar.'
Ravengar yawned and glanced at his watch.
'It's nearly my dinner-time,' said he.
Again Hugo sprang forward, and, snatching at the watch, tore it and the chain from Ravengar's waistcoat, dashed them to the floor, and stamped on them. He was amazed, and he was also delighted, at his own fury. The lust of destruction had got hold of him.
'Ass!' he murmured, suddenly lowering his voice. 'Can't you guess what I mean to do?'
'I cannot,' Ravengar stammered.
'I mean to put you to the same test to which you put me. You arranged that I should spend twenty-two hours in a vault without ventilation. At the end of five hours I was by no means dead. I might have survived the twenty-two. But, frankly, I don't fancy I should. And I don't fancy you will. In fact, I'm convinced that you won't.'
'Indeed!' said Ravengar uncertainly.
'You think this scene is not real,' Hugo continued. 'You think it can't be real. You refuse to credit the fact that this time to-morrow you will be dead. You refuse to admit to yourself that I am in earnest—deadly, fatal earnest.'
'Upon my soul!' Ravengar burst out, standing, 'I believe you are.'
'Good,' said Hugo. 'You are waking up, positively. You are getting accustomed to the unpleasant prospect of not dying in your bed surrounded by inconsolable dependants.'
'Hugo,' Ravengar began persuasively, 'you must be aware that all these suspicions of yours are a figment of your excited brain. You must be aware that I never meant to murder you.'
'My dear fellow,' Hugo replied with calm bitterness, 'I don't intend to murder you. I intend merely to put you in that vault. Your death will be an accidental consequence, as mine would have been. And why should you not die? Can you give me a single good reason why you should continue to live? What good are you doing on the earth? Are you making anyone happy? Are you making yourself happy? That spark of vitality which constitutes your soul has chanced on an unfortunate incarnation. Suppose that I release it, and give it a fresh opportunity, shall I not be acting worthily? For you must agree that murder in the strict sense is an impossible thing. The immortal cannot die. Vital energy cannot be destroyed. All that the murderer does is to end one incarnation and begin another.'
'So that is your theory!'
'Was it not yours, when you got me deposited in the vault?' Hugo demanded with ferocious irony. 'I am bound to believe that it was. The common outcry against murder (as it is called) can have no weight with enlightened persons like you and me, Ravengar.'
'Perhaps not,' said Ravengar, summoning his powers of self-control. 'But the common outcry against murder is apt to be very inconvenient for the person who chooses, as you put it, to end one incarnation and begin another. Has it not struck you, Owen, that inquiries would be made for me, that my death would be certain to be discovered, and that ultimately you would suffer the penalty?'
'My arrangements for the future are far more complete than yours could have been in regard to me,' Hugo answered smoothly. 'You betrayed some clumsiness. I shall profit by your mistakes. No one will see you go into the Safe Deposit except myself and a man whom I can trust. No one at all except myself will see you go into the vault. I can manage the operation alone. A little chloroform will quieten you for a time. The vault once closed will not be opened during my lifetime, unless at four o'clock to-morrow night I hear you knocking on the door. Of course, inquiries will be made, but they will be futile. People often simply disappear. You will simply disappear.'
The clock struck six.
'And your conscience?' Ravengar muttered.
'It's soon well under control. Besides, I shall be doing the human race, and especially the investing part of the human race, a very good turn.'
Then Ravengar approached Hugo, and, Hugo rising to meet him, their faces almost touched in the middle of the great room.
'You called me a cur,' he said. 'Yet perhaps I am not such a cur after all. You have beaten me. You mean to finish me; I can see it in your face. Well, you will regret it more than I shall. Do you know I have often wished to die? You are right in saying that there is no reason why I should live. I am only a curse to the world. But you are wrong to scorn me when you kill me. You ought to pity me. Did I choose my temperament, my individuality? As I am, so I was born, and from his character no man can escape.'
And he sat down, and Hugo sat down.
'When is it to be?' Ravengar questioned.
'In a few minutes,' said Hugo impassively, feeding his mortal resentment on the memory of those hours when he himself had waited for death in the vault.
'Then I shall have time to ask you how you came to know that Camilla Payne, or rather Camilla Tudor, is alive.'
'She is not alive,' Hugo explained. 'The suggestion contained in my decoy letter was a pure invention in order to entice you. As you tempted me into the vault, so I tempted you here on your way to the vault.'
'But she is alive all the same!' Ravengar persisted. 'It is the fact that she is not dead that makes me less unwilling to die, for a word from her might send me to a death more shameful than the one you have so kindly arranged for me.'
Hugo in that instant admired Ravengar, and he replied quite gently:
'You are mistaken. Where can you have got the idea that she is not dead? She is dead. I myself—I myself screwed her up in her coffin.'
The words sounded horrible.
'Then you were in the plot!' Ravengar cried.
'What plot?'
'The plot to persuade me falsely that she is dead. Bah! I know more than you think. I know, for example, that her body is not in the coffin in Brompton Cemetery. And I am almost sure that I know where she is hiding. I should have known beyond doubt before to-morrow morning. However, what does it matter now?'
'Not in the coffin?' Hugo whispered, as if to himself. His whole frame trembled, shook, and his heart, leaping, defied his intellect.
When at eleven o'clock that same winter night Hugo stood hesitating, with certain tools and a hooded electric lamp in his hand, on the balcony in front of the drawing-room window of Francis Tudor's sealed flat, he thought what a strange, illogical, and capricious thing is the human heart.
He knew that Camilla was dead. He had had the very best and most convincing evidence of the fact. He knew that Ravengar's suspicions were without foundation, utterly wrong-headed; and yet those statements of his enemy had unsettled him. They had not unsettled the belief of his intelligence, but they had unsettled his soul's peace. And that curiosity to learn the whole truth about the history of the relations between Francis Tudor and Camilla, that curiosity which had slumbered for months, and which had been so suddenly awakened by Ravengar's lure of the morning, was now urged into a violent activity.
Nor was this all. Camilla was surely dead. But supposing that by some incredible chance she was not dead (lo! the human heart), could he kill Ravengar? This question had presented itself to him as he sat in the dome listening to Ravengar's asseverations that Camilla lived. And the mere ridiculous, groundless suspicion that she lived, the mere fanciful dream that she lived, had quite changed and softened Hugo's mood. He had struggled hard to keep his resolution to kill Ravengar, but it had melted away; he had fanned the fire of his mortal hatred, but it had cooled, and at length he had admitted to himself, angrily, reluctantly, that Ravengar had escaped the ordeal of the vault. And this being decided, what could he do with Ravengar? Retain him under lock and key? Why? To what end? Such illegal captivities were not practicable for long in London. Besides, they were absurd, melodramatic, and futile. As the moments passed and the fumes of a murderous intoxication gradually cleared away, Hugo had regained his natural, sagacious perspective, and he had perceived that there was only one thing to do with Ravengar.
He let Ravengar go. He showed him politely out.
It was an anti-climax, but the incalculable and peremptory processes of the heart often result in an anti-climax.
The night was cold and damp, as the morning had been, and Hugo shivered, but not with cold. He shivered in the mere exciting eagerness of anticipation. He had chosen the drawing-room window because the panes were very large. He found it perfectly simple, by means of the treacled cardboard which he carried, to force in the pane noiselessly. He pushed aside the blind, and crept within the room. So simple was it to violate the will of a dead man, and the solemnly affixed seals of his executor! He had arranged that the pane should be replaced before dawn, and the new putty darkened to match the rest. Thus, no trace would remain of the burglarious entry. No seal on door or window would have been broken.
He stood upright in the drawing-room, restored the blind and the heavy curtains to their positions, and then ventured to press the button of his lamp. He saw once more the vast outlines of the room which he had last seen under such circumstances of woe. The great pieces of furniture were enveloped in holland covers, and resembled formless ghosts in the pale illumination of the lamp. He shivered again. He was afraid now, with the fear of the unknown, the forbidden, and the withheld. Why was he there? What could he hope to discover?
In answer to these questions, he replied:
'Why did Francis Tudor order that the flat should be closed? He must have had some reason. I will find it out. It is essential to my peace of mind to know. I meant to commit murder to-day; I have only committed burglary. I ought to congratulate myself and sing for joy, instead of feeling afraid.'
So he reassured his spirit as he stepped carefully into the midst of the holland-covered and moveless ghosts. On the mantelpiece to the left there still stood the electric table-light, and by its side still lay the screwdriver.... He determined to pass straight through the drawing-room. At the further edge of the carpet, on the parquet flooring between the carpet and the portière leading to the inner hall, he noticed under the ray of his lamp footprints in the dust—footprints of a man, and smaller footprints, either of a woman or a child. He remained motionless, staring at them. Then it occurred to him that during the days between the death of its tenant and the sealing-up the flat would probably not have been cleaned, and that these footprints must have been made months ago by the last persons to leave the flat. Little dust would fall after the closing of the flat. He was glad that he had thought of that explanation. It was a convincing explanation.
Nevertheless he dared not proceed. For on the other mantelpiece to the right there was a clock, and while staring in the ghostly silence at the footprints, he had fancied that his ear caught the ticking of the clock. Imagination, doubtless! But he dared not proceed until he had satisfied himself that his ears had deluded him; and, equally, he dared not approach the clock to satisfy himself. He could only gaze at the reflection of the clock in the opposite mirror. In the opposite mirror the hands indicated half a minute past nine; hence the clock was really at half a minute to three, and if it was actually going, it might be expected to strike immediately. He waited. He heard a preliminary grinding noise familiar to students of symptoms in clocks, and in the fraction of a second he was bathed from head to foot in a cold perspiration.
The clock struck three.
The next instant he walked boldly up to the clock and bent his ear to it. No, he could hear nothing. It had stopped. He glared steadily at the hands for two minutes by his own watch; they did not move.
In the back of his head, in the small of his back, in his legs, little tracts of his epidermis tickled momentarily. He wiped his face, and walked boldly away from the clock to the portière, which he lifted with one arm. Then he threw the light of his lamp direct on the dial, and glared at it again, fearful lest it should have taken advantage of his departure to resume its measuring of eternity.
Could a clock go for four months? A clock could be made that would go for four months. But this was not a freak-clock. It was a large Louis Seize pendule, and he knew it to be genuine of his own knowledge; he had bought it.
He dropped the portière between himself and the clock, and stood in the inner hall. He had had as much of the drawing-room as was good for his nerves.
The inner hall was oblong in shape, and measured about twelve feet at its greatest width. In front of him, as he stood with his back to the drawing-room, was a closed door, which he knew led into the principal bedroom of the flat. To his right another heavy portière divided the inner from the outer hall. This portière hung in straight perpendicular folds. He wondered why the portières had not been taken down and folded away.
He decided to penetrate first into the bedroom, partly because he deemed the bedroom might contain the solution of the enigma, and partly because his eye had fancied it saw a slight tremor in the portière leading to the outer hall. So he stepped stoutly across the space which separated him from the bedroom door. But he had not reached the door before there was a loud, sharp explosion, and a panel of the door splintered and showed a hole, and he thought he heard a faint cry.
A revolver shot!
He did not believe in anything so far-fetched as man-traps and spring-guns. Hence there must be some person or persons in the flat. Some unseen intelligence was following him. Some mysterious will had ordained that he should not enter that bedroom. The shot was a warning. He guessed from the flight of the splinters and the appearance of the hole that the mysterious will must be on the other side of the portière, but the portière gave no sign.
What was he to do? He had brought with him no weapon. He had not anticipated that revolvers would be needed in the exploration of an empty and forbidden flat. The very definite terrors of the inner hall seemed to him to surpass the vaguer terrors of the drawing-room, and he decided to return thither in order to consider quietly what his tactics should be; if necessary, he could return to the dome for arms and assistance. But no sooner did he move a foot towards the drawing-room than another shot sounded. The drawing-room portière trembled, and something crashed within the apartment. The mysterious will had ardently decided that he should go neither back nor forward.
'Who's there? Who's that shooting?' he muttered thickly, and extinguished his lamp.
He had meant to cry out loud, but, to his intense surprise, his throat was dried up.
There was no answer, no stir, no noise. The silence that exists between the stars seemed to close in upon him. Then he really knew what fear was. He admitted to himself that he was unmistakably and horribly afraid. He admitted that life was inconceivably precious, and the instinct to preserve it the greatest of all instincts. And gradually he came to see that the safest course was the most desperate course, and gradually his courage triumphed over his fear.
He dropped gently to his hands and knees, and began, with a thousand precautions, to crawl like a serpent towards the outer hall. The darkened lamp he held between his teeth. If the mysterious will fired again, the mysterious will would almost to a certainty fire harmlessly over his head. At last his hands touched the portière. He hesitated, listened, and put one hand under the portière. Then, relighting the lamp, he sprang up with a yell on the other side of the portière, and clutched for the unseen intelligence.
But there was nothing. He stood alone in the outer hall. To his right lay the side-passage between the drawing-room and the cabinet de toilette, which Camilla had used on the night of her engagement. In front of him was a door, slightly ajar, which led to the servants' quarters. He gazed around, breathing heavily.