He carried her to a sofa and laid her down, and presently she opened her eyes.
“I am an awful idiot,” she said, trying to rise, but he laid his hand on her shoulder.
“You must lie there a little while. What is the trouble?”
“The room is a little close, I think,” she said.
The room was stuffy: Larry had noticed it when he came in, and as the landlady pulled up the window, she apologized.
“I’m always telling the servants to keep this room aired, and they never do,” she said. “It’s like a furnace. I am very sorry.”
Larry had seen many fainting women, but never before had such a phenomenon occasioned him so much alarm.
“I don’t remember doing such a stupid thing before,” said the girl at last, sitting up.
“You had better go home,” said Larry solemnly.
She was still very white, but the cup of tea which the landlady brought in revived her.
“I’m not going home,” she said firmly. “I am going with you to Todd’s. You promised me I should, and as soon as I get into the air I shall be all right. If you were to take me a drive around Regent’s Park—it’s quite near—I should be as well as ever.”
They made the slow round of the outer circle and the colour came back to her face.
“Was it this morning you told me I was overdoing it?” smiled Larry. “My young friend, you are in danger of a breakdown.”
She shook her head.
“I shall be very hurt if you insist upon that. I am not so stupid that I would go on if I wasn’t fit,” she said. “That undignified collapse into your arms will not occur again. Besides,” she said mischievously, “if I am liable to having a fit on the mat, don’t you think it would be better if you were with me than if I were by myself in my room?”
“There’s something in that,” said Larry. “But I’m not so sure that visiting Todd’s is the best way of spending an afternoon. It’s very smelly, and the sights are not quite pleasant.”
“They will not worry me,” she answered quietly. “Please, please let me go!”
He reached over and took her hand and she did not resist this attention.
“You can go just where you like, Diana,” he said, “and—and—as far as you like!”
By now his own flustered feelings had calmed, and he remembered that he had not asked to see the novel wedding ring of Emma, the charwoman. Nor had he made the inquiries which he would have made but for the dramatic interruption of Diana’s collapse.
He drove the girl back to Piccadilly, and they lunched together, and then they went on to Scotland Yard. In the restaurant he had telephoned to Harvey, and Harvey had renewed the distress of Mrs. Portland by another visit. He was waiting for Larry at the Yard in Room 47 when they returned.
“I’ve traced Emma,” he said, and his tone was so serious that Larry knew that he was not wrong in giving importance to the interview which the charwoman had with Stuart. “She lives, or lived, in Camden Town,” said Harvey. “She lodges with an Army pensioner and his wife.”
“Well, have you seen her?”
“No, sir, I haven’t seen her. She’s no longer there,” said Harvey. “She has not been home since the night following the Stuart murder.”
Larry made a little grimace.
“That is the real end and the real clue of this crime,” he said. “Emma the charwoman is going to supply us with a considerable amount of information. Did she take away her things from her lodgings?” he asked.
“No, sir,” replied Harvey. “That is the curious circumstance. The woman neither told her friends that she was leaving, nor did she take any of her clothing or her belongings with her.”
“Put her on the list,” said Larry, “and warn all stations. No news of Blind Jake?”
“No, sir.”
“Nor Fred?”
“No, sir.”
“To the already overburdened vigilance of the Metropolitan Constabulary—poor chaps,” said Larry with a smile, “we will add the name of Miss Clarissa Stuart. Young, pretty, and smartly dressed, probably staying in a good-class hotel. Put a comb through those places where a woman of wealth is likely to be, and report.”
Harvey lifted his hat and went out, and Larry walked slowly to his desk and stood for a while looking down at it disapprovingly.
“I don’t know why I am given a table in this office,” he said. “I never sit at it.” Nevertheless, he dropped down in his chair and glanced across at the girl. “Well, Miss Ward,” he said, “you have a further mystery to add to the others. Emma has disappeared as unexpectedly as Flash Fred or as Stuart, and the man who persuaded Emma to go was the man who nearly persuaded Mrs. Weldon to depart this life.”
“Blind Jake?” she asked.
“That is the lad,” he replied. “A terrible figure. I can’t think of him without a shudder.”
“What a confession for a detective to make!” she scoffed. “Of course you can think of him—he’s human!”
“And a very sore human, too,” smiled Larry. “For Flash Fred was fairly useful with a knife in the days when I was trailing him for carving up Leroux, a rival of his.”
“Do you think they have caught him?” she asked.
He shook his head.
“No, Fred has gone to earth. He’s gone because he’s afraid they’ll catch him.”
“Then he is not in with them?”
“Fred?” He laughed. “Not Fred. Fred’s a lone wolf and plays a lone hand. He preys upon the virtuous and the wicked alike. One of his many boasts is that he has never been a member of a gang, and I dare say that is why he has so far escaped, or partially escaped, the consequence of his rascality. He is in London,” he mused, “and I have an idea we shall see him again very soon.”
How soon he could not guess.
He worked for an hour, and seemed oblivious both of Diana’s presence and the looks she shot across at him—glances which were intended to remind him that he was taking her to Todd’s.
He covered sheet after sheet of paper, for it was his practice to write down his cases in narrative form; dovetailing the cause to the effect. They were curious-looking documents, these “statements” of his, abounding in marginal notes and interlinear corrections. Presently he finished writing, dropping the last sheet and slipping the paper into a drawer. Then he got up and stretched himself. He walked to the window and looked out. It was late afternoon and he could glimpse a wonderful picture of the Thames Embankment, a vista of blue bridges spanning a leaden stream, of dim spires looming through the eastern haze, of a long line of green where the trees shaded the broad sidewalk, of chocolate-coloured tram-cars that flashed to and fro—a fragment of London, recognizable even to those who had never seen the great city, or throbbed to its ceaseless pulsations.
Larry Holt scratched his nose unromantically and turned a dubious look to the waiting girl.
“If you still want to go to Todd’s, I’ll take you,” he said. “This is the hour I’d promised myself the pleasure of a visit.”
A car took them to the end of Lissom Grove, and they walked down Lissom Lane, which was a cul-de-sac opening from the bigger thoroughfare. Two plain-clothes police officers, who were waiting, joined them, and the party stepped to the side of the street opposite that on which the Home was situated.
“What is the place next door?” asked Larry, nodding at a black-looking house with shuttered windows.
“It used to be a laundry,” said the policeman. “There’s a yard and a shed at the back.”
“Laundry?” said the girl thoughtfully. “Do you remember that it was a laundry van that was outside my flat that night they tried to carry me off?”
“By Jimmy!” said Larry. “So it was!”
“It couldn’t have been this laundry, miss,” said the policeman. “It has not been doing business for twelve months. They went bankrupt, and somebody bought up the business but doesn’t seem to have made a start yet.”
“Those gates lead to the yard, I presume?” said Larry, pointing.
“Yes, sir. I haven’t seen a motor-van come out of there, and I don’t even know that they have one,” said the policeman. “But nowadays, when there are so many motor vehicles about, it is impossible to keep track of them.”
Larry went up the steps and knocked at the door, and the same little old man opened.
“Four people!” he yelled. “All strangers! What do you want?”
“I want to see Mr. Dearborn,” said Larry.
“Oh, yes, sir, you are the gentleman that came on Sunday morning at six a.m.,” said the little man, and went pattering down the long passage. “Come this way!” he bawled. “All of you. Four of them, sir!”
The Rev. John Dearborn came out of his study to meet the party, and ushered them in.
“Mr. Holt? I think I recognized your voice,” he said. His little dictating machine was spinning, and there was a thick pad of typed manuscript on his table. He put his hand lovingly upon it as he passed to his chair. “I have a gentleman who comes in to read for me in the evening,” he said, as though guessing Larry’s thoughts. “Now what is the object of to-night’s visit?” he asked. “Have you found your Blind Jake?”
“I have met him without finding him,” replied Larry grimly. “I merely want to see over the house. I have brought a lady with me.”
“How interesting!” said the Rev. John Dearborn, rising.
The girl held out her hand instinctively, and the man took it.
“I shall be most happy to show you round. You have some other friends?”
Larry introduced them, and together they went up the stairs, John Dearborn leading the way.
“We will start at the top of the house this time,” he said humorously. “Our friend Lew is still in his cubicle.”
“Aren’t you afraid to keep a man here who is not quite right in his head?”
“He is very weak,” said John Dearborn, “and I haven’t the heart to send him to the infirmary. I fear that I must do so sooner or later.”
Larry had the girl by his side on the landing, and lowering his voice he asked:
“Do you want to see this old man? He is rather——” He did not finish his sentence.
“I want to see him—yes,” she said. “You forget that I was nurse in an institute for the blind.”
Dearborn led the way to the cubicle. No lights shone, though there were electric globes on every landing. The blind needed no lights, thought Larry.
The old man in the cubicle lay quietly on his back, his hands folded patiently. He was no longer talking and was, indeed, much calmer than when Larry had seen him last.
“How are you to-day?” asked Larry.
The man made no reply. It was the girl who laid her hand upon his shoulder.
“Are you feeling better?” she asked, and the man started round.
“Who’s that? Is that you, Jim?” he asked. “Have you got any supper?”
“Are you feeling better?” said Diana.
“And bring me a mug of tea, will you?” said Lew, and lay over on his back and resumed the same attitude of resignation in which they had found him.
The girl stooped and looked closely at the old man; and, sensing her presence, he put up his hand and touched her face.
“Is that a lady?” he said.
And then Dearborn pressed past them and caught the man’s hand in his.
“Are you better to-day, Lew?” he said, and the man winked.
“All right, sir,” he replied. “I’m feeling fine, thank you.”
Diana Ward walked out of the cubicle, her eyes fixed absently on space, and Larry joined her.
“What is the matter?” he asked.
“That man is dead,” she said.
“Dead?” he repeated in amazement. “Of course he’s not dead.”
She nodded her head.
“Diana, I don’t understand you,” said Larry. He thought for a moment that her fainting fit had affected her mind and that she was talking light-headedly.
“Dead,” she repeated, and her voice had a passionate thrill which made him gasp. “As effectively dead as if he were lying cold and lifeless on that bed. Oh, it’s cruel, cruel!”
John Dearborn and the detectives were still in the cubicle discussing the invalid.
“What do you mean, Diana?” he asked.
“Don’t you see? I’ve seen it happen once before,” she said in a low voice that shook. “There were little black marks on the man’s ear. Those are powder marks. He has been deafened.”
“Deafened?” he whispered, still not grasping the significance of the revelation.
“You told me something of what this man said when you saw him on Sunday,” she said, speaking rapidly and almost in a whisper, “and now I see what has happened. This man has had a shotgun discharged near both ears, and he is dead.”
“But I don’t understand.”
“Do you realize,” she asked, and she spoke slowly now, “what it means to be blind and deaf?”
“Good God!” he gasped.
“That is what has happened to the man they call Lew. Some persons, who for their own purpose desire to spare his life, have made him incapable of testifying against them.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean,” she said, “that he is the man who wrote the Braille message found in Gordon Stuart’s pocket.”
Was it guesswork? Was it sheer deduction? Was it knowledge? These three questions flashed through Larry’s mind, but before he could ask her any further questions, John Dearborn had come from the cubicle and was feeling his way down the stairs.
On the next landing he opened the door of a dormitory which Larry had seen before. It consisted of three rooms which had been knocked into one at some previous period.
Obedient to Larry’s instructions, the two detectives did not follow the party in. One strolled down and took his place on the lower landing; the other sat upon the stairs that led to the cubicles above and waited.
“Is it light?” asked Dearborn as he walked into the inner room.
“Quite light,” said Larry.
“I am told there is rather a good view from this window,” said Dearborn, and pointed unerringly to a view which was neither picturesque nor extensive.
Larry did not reply. It was possibly a polite fiction that the views from the Home were lovely, and he did not desire to hurt, even in the slightest degree, the man who was so proud of a prospect which included six roofs and a hundred chimney pots.
“Is the window closed? I think it is,” said John Dearborn. “Will you open it for me?”
Larry pulled up the noisy sash, and a breath of cool, sweet air came into the stuffy dormitory.
“Thank you,” said Mr. Dearborn. “Now, perhaps the young lady——”
Larry was looking about the room. The girl was not in sight. He walked quickly to the door and the officer on duty stood up from the stairs on which he had been sitting.
“Which way did Miss Ward go?”
“She didn’t come out, sir,” said the man in surprise. “She went in the room with you.”
Larry stared at him.
“Didn’t come out?” he repeated in amazement. “Are you sure?”
“Absolutely sure.”
He called to the man on the lower landing:
“Did you see Miss Ward?”
“No, sir,” said the officer, “she hasn’t come out of that door. I can see it plainly from here, and I haven’t taken my eyes off it.”
Larry went back into the room. It was empty. There were half a dozen plain iron beds, but there was no place of concealment save a cupboard which stood against the wall opposite the fireplace. He was in a panic, and his heart was beating wildly as no danger to himself could have made it beat.
He pulled open the cupboard door. It was empty except for some old clothing which was hanging on a line of pegs. He flung these out and struck the back of the cupboard. It was solid.
“Have you found the young lady?” asked Dearborn presently.
“No, I have not,” said Larry quickly. “Is there any other way out of this room but these doors?”
The clergyman shook his head.
“No,” he said in astonishment. “Why do you ask? Oh, perhaps you are thinking we should have a means of egress in case of fire. We have been thinking over that matter——”
Larry was white of face, and he was trembling. He called in one of the police officers.
“You will remain in this room until you are relieved,” he said. Then he summoned the other. “Call Scotland Yard in my name and tell them I want twenty plain-clothes men here at once. There’s a constable on point duty at the end of Lissom Grove. Bring him here and station him outside the house.”
“What has happened?” demanded the Rev. Dearborn anxiously. “These are the only times when my malady distresses me, when I feel that I cannot help.”
“Perhaps it would be better if you went to your study,” said Larry gently. “I am afraid a crime has been committed under my very eyes.”
How could it have happened? He had heard no sound. He thought the girl was behind him. He knew she had gone into the room because he had pushed her in before him; he remembered that distinctly. He remembered her turning to the left to inspect the lower end of the room when he had gone to open the window—that was when it happened!
When he had pulled up the window he had made a noise which had drowned any sound which may have occurred at the farther end of the room. But it had all passed so quickly, and she had not left the room.
He began a systematic examination of the walls, looking for secret doorways. The coconut matting on the floor was pulled up, but without result. Diana Ward had disappeared as though an earthquake had swallowed her, as though she had dissolved into minutest atoms and had floated out of the window in invisible vapour.
Larry paced the dormitory, sick with fear, terrified as he had never been before. He had searched the house from roof to cellar, had explored dusty and dark corners of which the occupants of Todd’s Home were unacquainted; but searchings and questionings produced nothing—nothing!
Within half an hour a cordon of plain-clothes men had been drawn round the house, and Larry had been relieved from the dormitory and set free to conduct his search elsewhere.
“There is no communication between this house and the next?” he had asked the clergyman.
“None whatever,” said John Dearborn without hesitation. “In fact, some years ago the noise from the laundry was so great and disturbing to my men that I compelled the proprietors of the building to put up a new wall, a sort of inner lining, to deaden the sound. It is no longer in the occupation of the company,” he said. “They went bankrupt, and the premises were taken over by a firm of provision merchants. I understand that they intended storing their goods in the laundry building.”
“That is the small building one can see over the gates at the end of the yard?” said Larry.
“That is so,” replied the superintendent.
Larry went up to the door of the empty house and examined it carefully; and a sergeant from Scotland Yard made a close inspection.
“I can tell you this, sir, that nobody has been in or out of this door for a very long time,” he said. Over the railings which enclosed a narrow area they could see through the dusty windows into a room which was the quintessence of dinginess. It was quite bare and innocent of furniture. Larry felt his heart sinking with every minute that passed. If he should lose her, if he should lose her!
Only then did he realize what this girl meant to him. She was a friend of less than a week, and yet all other matters and interests—friends, profession, success—none of these meant anything to him compared with that one slim girl. He would willingly have sacrificed every prospect he had in life to hold her hand once more, or to exchange with her a dozen words. In the power of Blind Jake! He reeled under the thought. It was maddening—grotesquely horrible!
He pulled himself together with a jerk. He would go mad if he allowed his mind to dwell upon that hideous possibility.
He had no time to think upon the Stuart case or its bearing on this disappearance. All his energy and agony of endeavour were concentrated upon one object, one discovery—Diana Ward.
He climbed over the wooden gates and explored the yard of the laundry; and here he found something which set his eyes on the trail again. There were wheel tracks, and they were comparatively new. The tracks of a motor-car, possibly two cars. He looked round the littered yard for a garage, and saw a black-looking door which had the appearance of closing some such building.
Sergeant Harvey, who had followed him over the gate, tried a pick-lock on the door, and after two attempts succeeded in forcing back the bolt of the lock. The doors were fixed on slides, and they went back easily and noiselessly, almost at a touch.
“They have been used recently,” said Larry.
There were two cars in the garage—a long-bonneted limousine and a small motor-van. Larry walked in, and there was light enough to see, for the day had not yet failed.
“Look!” cried Larry suddenly, pointing to the hood of the motor-van.
It had been newly painted; but clearly underneath the white paint which covered it was the faint impression of a word, badly and awkwardly painted by an amateur hand—the word “Laundry.”
“Do you remember, Harvey, Miss Ward telling us that there was a laundry van outside her flat the night they tried to abduct her? If she can identify this——” He stopped suddenly with a twinge of pain. If she were there to identify anything!
The limousine had recently been cleaned, and he took the precaution of jotting down the numbers of both cars. It might be, of course, that these machines were the legitimate property of the new owners of the building, and had been engaged only in perfectly innocent business. It might have been a coincidence that such a car was waiting in the Charing Cross Road the night Blind Jake tried to abduct the girl.
He closed the doors, and Harvey re-locked them.
“ ’Phone these numbers through to the Yard,” said Larry. “Ask the Registration Department to identify them!”
Harvey went off and Larry was left alone in the yard. He went again to the wheel-tracks. They had been made that morning, for a shower of rain had fallen in the night, and the newness of the markings was obvious.
He walked along to the laundry building proper—a new erection of brick, with ground-glass windows. Here, too, was a sliding door, and on the stone steps leading up was a foot-mark. He bent suddenly to look at the print.
Larry, in moments of excitement, was wont to act jerkily. And now his movements to an observer would seem sudden and unexpected. As he bent his head—
“Plok!”
It was a sound like a cork being discharged from a gaseous champagne bottle, only a little louder, a little more metallic. There was an answering crash near at hand, a splinter of wood fell upon Larry’s neck, and he jumped up with a start. A panel of the door was smashed as by a bullet. If he had not dropped his head at that moment to examine the footprint—Sunny would have stopped the morning papers! That, strangely enough, was the first thought that struck him.
Larry looked round quickly; he had recognized the sound as soon as he had heard it. There had been no report, but he had been fired at with a rifle or pistol fitted with a Maxim silencer. He had heard that “Plok!” before. His keen eyes ranged the windows of the building behind for a sign of smoke, but whatever there might have been must have been instantly dissipated. Then he noticed for the first time that the dormitory from whence the girl had disappeared commanded a view of the yard. He saw the open window, and with his exact sense of topography located the room. No other shot was fired, and he crossed the yard, keeping his eyes upon the backs of the two houses, ready to drop at the first flash of a rifle.
Harvey, on his way back, had opened a wicket in the bigger gate, and Larry stepped out into the street in a thoughtful frame of mind. He went straight back to the Home. The blind hawkers who used the Home were beginning to arrive. They came in ones and twos, tapping their way with their iron-shod sticks, and as they passed him on their way to the common room, a local officer identified them.
“They’re all decent citizens, eh?” said Larry. “None of them is on the crime-index?”
“None, sir,” said the man. “They’re all quite law-abiding people, and we’ve never had a complaint against any of them.”
Larry went up to the dormitory from whence he believed the shot had been fired. To his surprise, the door was locked and the officer was on duty outside.
“What is the meaning of this?” he asked sternly.
“The superintendent sent a message up, telling me that you wished to see me, sir,” said the detective. “I went down and found that he had sent no such message. When I came back, the door was locked.”
“From the inside?” asked Larry.
“Apparently, sir. There is no key in the lock.”
“Who brought the message?”
“The little fellow who opens the door of the place.”
“I know him,” nodded Larry. “What explanation did he give?”
“He said that somebody with the superintendent’s voice told him to go upstairs with the message.”
“Stand on one side,” said Larry, and with his foot kicked open the door.
The room was empty, but he sniffed.
“A rifle has been fired in here, probably when you were downstairs,” he said. “You understand that you are not to leave this room unless I personally or Sergeant Harvey come to you and bring a man to take your place.”
“Very good, sir,” said the crestfallen worker.
“But in the circumstances I’m not blaming you,” interrupted Larry with a faint smile. “We are dealing with an extraordinary gang, and they will use extraordinary methods—you cannot be expected to meet every move as it comes, let alone anticipate what their next will be.”
There was no doubt that the rifle had been fired in this room; he could smell the exploded cordite; the proof came when he found under the bed near the window the exploded shell of a cartridge. He descended to the superintendent’s office and found the Rev. John Dearborn a little perturbed.
“How long do you intend keeping your men here, Mr. Holt?” he asked. “Some of my fellows want to go to their dormitory to sleep.”
“I am keeping my men here until I get some proof that Miss Ward is not on the premises,” said Larry shortly, “and until I have found the gentleman who shot at me from the very dormitory in which she disappeared.”
“Shot at you?” said the other in surprise. “You don’t mean——”
“I mean just what I say,” said Larry. “Forgive me if I am brusque. Whilst you were talking to the detective who had been brought downstairs by a ruse I was shot at from that room and the door was locked.”
“It is most amazing,” said the Rev. John, shaking his head. “I cannot imagine a situation more trying to myself or more exciting for you.”
“Exciting!” repeated Larry, and laughed bitterly. “There will be excitement all right,” he said grimly, “but it will come later, when I have unravelled this tangle.”
And then his mordant humour asserted itself.
“You should put this situation into one of your plays, Mr. Dearborn,” he said, and he thought he saw the colour come to the man’s pale face.
“That is quite an idea,” replied the superintendent thoughtfully, “and I thank you for it. Have you ever seen any of my plays?”
“No, I have not seen them,” said Larry, “but I am going at the first opportunity to pay a visit to the Macready.”
The superintendent shook his head.
“I sometimes fear,” he said, “that they are not as good as some of my friends think they are, and I am disappointed that you have not seen one. But they go on producing them, and money comes in for the Home.”
“Who pays the cost of production?” asked Larry curiously. He welcomed any diversion from the overwhelming misery of his thoughts.
“A gentleman who is interested in my work,” replied Mr. Dearborn. “I have never met him, but he has never refused to produce a play of mine. Sometimes I think he does so because he wishes to help this Home.”
“He must have some good reason,” said Larry.
Conversation flagged after this. Once a telephone buzzed, and the superintendent took up a receiver from his table and listened.
“Yes, I think you had better,” he said, and hung up the receiver again. “A mundane question from the kitchen,” he smiled. “I have telephones fitted all over the house so far as our means allow us,” he added. “It saves so many journeys.”
Just then a deputation came from the common room with a grievance. The men of No. 1 Dormitory wish to go into their sleeping-places. Some of them made a practice of sleeping the clock round, and all of them, whether they wanted to retire at once or not, claimed their right to enter their dormitory.
“You hear?” said the superintendent. “It is rather difficult for me.”
Larry nodded.
“They can have beds at the nearest hotel,” he said, “and I will pay for them. Or they can sleep somewhere else. I don’t mind the beds being taken out. But nobody occupies that room until Miss Ward is found.”
He strolled out into the passage and walked to the common room. These poor men were entitled to an explanation, and he gave it, stating the case fairly and simply, and there was a chorus of approval even from the most obstreperous.
He had concluded his harangue and was standing in the passage with his back to the wall, his head on his breast, thinking, when he heard a commotion upstairs, and a cry, and leapt up the stairs two at a time. He got to the first landing and was turning, when he saw a sight that brought his heart into his mouth.
Walking slowly down the stairs toward him was Diana Ward. Her blouse hung in rags, so that the under-bodice and the snowy white of her shoulders were visible. She carried in one hand a compact Smith-Wesson revolver, and on her white face was a smile of triumph.
For a second Larry looked at her and then leapt up the remaining stairs to meet her, and caught her in his arms.
“My dear, my dear!” he said brokenly. “Thank God you have come back!”
Diana Ward had strolled to the farther end of the dormitory and was feeling the texture of the rough sheets. The housewife instinct in her was a strong one and her nurse’s training had given her an additional interest in the means which were adopted to give comfort to these poor blind beggars—for beggars most of them were. She had heard the superintendent ask Larry to open the window, and she was watching idly, when the door of the cupboard behind her opened without a sound and a barefooted man crept out.
The first thing that Diana knew was that something like a piece of wet chamois leather was over her face, and she was being lifted bodily. For a second she was paralyzed, and in that second she had passed through the cupboard and the wall behind. Both doors fastened—for the back of the press, as Larry had suspected at first, was a door that moved, pegs and all, outwards. What he could not know was that it was literally a brick door.
She heard its thud as it closed, and, wriggling her face clear of the wet leather, she screamed. Again a hand that was big enough to cover the whole of her face came over her mouth, and she was dragged along in the darkness; another door opened, and she was thrown in. There was a click, and an electric light blazed from above, and she saw her captor and shrank back in terror.
He was tall, bigger than any man she had seen. She guessed he was seven feet in height, and his breadth was in proportion. He was dressed in a shirt and a pair of trousers. His feet and his arms were bare, and she had no need to study that hairy forearm to appreciate its strength. It was as massive as an average man’s thigh, and the muscles stood out in swathes. His face was red and large and curiously flat.
His eyes, which did not move when he spoke, were of the palest blue, and a mane of gray hair swept back from his forehead and hung untidily behind. The mouth, heavy and gross, was covered by a short unkempt beard which was neither gray nor yellow, but had something of each in its hue. His enormous ears stuck out from his head almost at right angles, and she thought she had never seen so terrible a creature in her life.
“I’ll let ye have a look at me so that ye’ll know me again,” he giggled. (There was no other word that Diana could think of that so described that shrill laugh of his.) “Where’s your gun?” he bantered. “Why don’t you fire it at poor old Jake—he told you all about me, I’ll bet!”
She knew that he referred to Larry Holt, but made no reply. Her eyes were searching the room for some weapon, but the rough plastered walls were bare and there was not a stick of furniture in the place. The only window was a long narrow slip of toughened glass near the ceiling, flanked on each side by two wall ventilators. She searched her bag, but there was nothing there. She was even without hatpins, though they would be practically useless against this brute.
“Looking for something to kill me with, are you?” he giggled again. “I hear you! Now you sit down and be patient, young woman,” he said. “There’s a good time coming, and nobody wants to hurt you.”
He did not attempt to approach her, and she had that relief, but his next words told her that the real danger was but postponed.
“Ye’re pretty by all accounts,” he chuckled. “And them as likes pretty ones might give the world for you. It’s a wonder to me that They ain’t took ye, my dear, but They haven’t any use for women or marriage and the like, so They’ve given ye to Old Jake.”
He giggled again and the girl went cold at the sound. He had a trick of pausing before and emphasizing “They” as though the word stood in capitals in his dark mind.
“I can’t see ye, so prettiness don’t mean much to me, my little darling. And if your face was like hers”—he jerked his thumb to the ceiling—“it wouldn’t make no difference to me.”
“You’ll never get out of this building,” she said, realizing that it was best to show a bold attitude. “Mr. Holt is in the house next door, and by this time the place will be surrounded.”
This time his chuckle had a deeper note.
“There are ten ways out of the house,” he said contemptuously. “That’s why They bought it. There’s a hole underneath the cellar where you can walk for miles, and nobody there to stop you but the rats. Rats are afraid of blind men.”
There was the hint of a curious, childlike simplicity that ill fitted his monstrous shape.
“Sooner or later he will get you,” she said quietly, and then, with a sudden inspiration: “He has already got Lew.”
He was on the point of leaving the room, and he spun round, his face working.
“Lew!” he roared. “He’s got Lew!”
Then he was silent, and the silence ended in a shout of laughter that seemed to shake the room.
“Lew will tell him a lot!” he said. “How’s he going to ask Lew for information when Lew doesn’t know where he is, or who he’s talking to? He can’t read or write. He’d have been dead, too,” he nodded sagely, “dead as a door nail, Lew would have been, for the dirty trick he played upon Them. He was the man who put the paper into the pocket of the feller They croaked!”
“We know that,” she said boldly, and he seemed to be impressed.
“You found that out, did you?” he said. “But Lew didn’t tell ye. He’d have been dead, as dead as a door nail, Lew would, only They didn’t want no dead men knocking about. Me and Lew carried him down the steps,” he said, nodding his great head. “I can tell you that, because I know the lor. I know the lor properly, I do. You can’t tell Old Jake anything.”
She was wondering what he meant by this boast of his knowledge of the law.
“A wife can’t give evidence against her husband,” he said with a little leer. “That’s why I tell you all this, little darling.”
“A wife!” she gasped, sick at the ghastliness of the suggestion.
“Mrs. Jake Bradford,” he chortled. “Bradford is my name, my darling, and you’ll be married by his reverence, too, proper and in order.”
“You fool!” she burst forth in her anger and fear. “Do you think anybody could marry me to a horror like you? Do you think I should stand without protesting and telling all I know, by your side? You’re mad.”
He bent his head forward and his voice came lower as he spoke, until it was little more than a whisper.
“There’s worse than me in this house,” he said slowly, “and maybe you won’t mind me if you don’t see me, young lady. And you may be blind as I am, and deaf, too, like Lew.” He paused, and she shrank back, holding on to the walls for support. “And dumb, if you’re going to talk!” he roared in a sudden fury. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to you if They told me to.”
The door opened and closed. A key turned and a bolt was shot, and looking up, she saw he was gone, and slid to the floor half conscious, half fainting. Then with an effort she drooped her head low and felt the blood coming back, and presently she was able to stand.
No power of will could stop her hands from shaking, and it was not until she had paced the room for ten minutes that she came back to anything like normal. She knew that it was no idle threat this man had uttered. He would be merciless if his unknown superiors gave the order. He would crush out the youth and the beauty of youth, the sweet senses of life, without compunction at the word of Them. He would mutilate and torture, and pity would not come to him. She had to think clearly and think quickly.
She went to the door, but she knew that escape that way was impossible. There was no chair by which she could reach the window, and she could not make her escape without even attracting attention through that slit of wall. There was nothing in the room but the electric light.
She remembered Larry’s story of how this man had come toward him with his hands up, and how he had crushed the bulb in his powerful fist. He must be animal strong, she thought. Wasn’t there a danger of his being shocked by the electric current?
At that she looked up quickly. The light had been fixed without any regard to appearance. The long wire came from the ceiling at one end of the room and was loosely tacked to the ceiling as far as the centre, where it passed over a hook and hung downwards, with a little tin reflector over the pear-shaped lamp. She reached for the lamp and turned it round.
“Two hundred volts,” she read, ground upon the crystal glass.
She tried to unhook the wire by throwing up the loose end, but it was some time before she succeeded, and at last the loose part fell and the lamp jerked to the floor and almost touched it. She caught the loose flex in her hand and pulled gently, and the thin wire brackets which held the flex to the ceiling came away without any difficulty. The switch was near the door, and she walked across and turned it off. Putting one foot upon the flex, near to where it entered the aperture of the shade, she pulled with all her might and after several attempts it snapped.
She was in darkness, but her nimble fingers plucked at the loose end of the wire, and with her finger-nails she cleared away the rubber casing which enclosed the tiny thread-like strands of copper. Soon she had something that felt like a loose-haired broom in her hands, and she was satisfied. She thought she heard a noise in the passage, and, running to the switch, turned the current on again. She groped in the half-darkness for her bag and found it, took out her gloves and put them on, then felt gingerly for the hanging strands. She took them in her hands and held the “brush” before her, being careful not to touch one exposed strand. Pushing away the shade and the globe with her foot, she waited in the centre of the room. And then the door opened.
“Here I am again, dearie,” and her breath came quickly as she heard the door locked from the inside. “You think I’m a funny-looking fellow, don’t you?” He did not know that the light was out, for he lived in everlasting darkness.
For a time he made no attempt to come near her. She could just see the shape of him by the evening light which filtered through the narrow window.
“Tony missed him,” he said, by way of conveying information. “Missed him!” he said contemptuously. “If I’d had my eyes, I’d have got the devil! I’d get him now with this little gun of mine, blind as I am, if I could hear him move. But we’ll have Holty yet, my darling. We’ll have him and cut his heart out. He’ll wish he was never born.”
He lowered his voice, and said something which was not intelligible to the girl. Then he seemed to recall the object of his visit.
“Come to Old Jake, my dear,” he giggled, as he walked stealthily toward her, both of his huge arms outstretched. “Come to your old husband, my pretty!”
He was as quick as a cat, and one hand had gripped the shoulder of her blouse before she realized he was upon her—gripped it and tore it from shoulder to hem. She threw herself back, and his other hand came up—and touched the outspread wire. With a yell that was half shriek, half roar, he fell back.
“What did you do?” he asked savagely. “What did you do, you little devil? Did you knife me like that swine?”
He was evidently feeling himself to discover an injury, and then he leapt at her, and this time the wire struck his face, and he fell to the ground like a log.
She heard him stir.
“What is it, what is it?” he whispered. “I can’t see it! You oughtn’t to treat an old blind man like that, you little——”
His hand shot out and caught her ankle, flinging her to the ground. But again his face touched the electric wire, charged with 200 volts, and he screamed and rolled over. He was mad now, a whimpering lunatic. Again and again he approached her; again and again his hand, his face, his neck, came into contact with the current. And then suddenly he fell again, and the girl thrust the cruel ends of the wire at his throat. She felt like a murderess as he shivered convulsively. But she had to kill him; she knew that nothing short of killing him would save her life.
Presently she took the wire away. He lay very still, and her shaking hands searched his pockets. She found the key, felt the revolver in his pocket and extracted it, and fumbled for the lock. Presently the door was open and she was in the passage which turned to the right, and along here she went. She was in a lighter room with two windows, but she was still in mortal terror; for now she had lost her best weapon of defence.
The door was easy to find. Cleverly concealed it might be in the dormitory of Todd’s Home, but here it was well marked. She pulled a handle, and the mass of brickwork swung back and she walked through the door. A man standing in the dormitory spun round, a revolver in his hand.
“Good Lord!” he cried. “Miss Ward, where did you come from?”
That sense of security, of peace, and of deep happiness was inexpressibly sweet, she thought, as she lay in Larry Holt’s arms. Presently she released herself, and in a few hurried words had said enough to send a small battalion of detectives racing to the dormitory and through the brick door, which she had left ajar.
Larry handed the girl to the care of Harvey and followed his men. The room where Diana had been imprisoned was empty. He stopped long enough to switch off the current, then joined the searchers. There was no doubt that this place, for all its unoccupied appearance, had regular tenants. They found rooms that had been built within rooms, a thin wall being erected within a few feet of each window. This meant that the house might be occupied at night, and lights might blaze in every apartment without anybody outside being the wiser.
Blind Jake had said no more than the truth when he had told the girl that there were plenty of ways out of the house. They found one in the cellar that led to an old disused rain-water sewer, and here pursuit was abandoned. None of the party except Larry, who always carried a small flash lamp, was equipped for a chase through the darkness.
Another exit led directly into the yard where Larry had found the garage. A third communicated with the kitchen of Todd’s Home.
Larry, realizing that his quarry had escaped, went back to the girl. He found her sitting in the superintendent’s office, the watchful Harvey embarrassingly close to her side—an attitude which was explained when the laughing girl lifted one of her arms, for Harvey, who was taking no risks, had handcuffed their wrists together!
“And very wise, too,” said Larry with a smile as the detective unfastened the irons. “Now, Mr. Dearborn, I want to have some sort of explanation of the mysterious happenings in this house.”
“I don’t think anything mysterious has happened here,” said Mr. Dearborn quietly. “You cannot hold me responsible for villainy which may have been perpetrated next door. I am told that there are doors communicating between these two houses, but of that I had not the slightest knowledge. If there was a man living next door——”
“There were six men living next door,” said Larry. “We found their beds and some of their clothing. From the fact that there were books, some of them open, it is pretty clear that they are not blind.”
Mr. Dearborn shrugged his despair.
“What can I do?” he asked. “In this house we are dependent entirely upon the loyalty of our inmates; and though it is possible sometimes to detect the presence of a stranger by his unusual footfalls, his voice or his cough, it is quite possible that these men made the freest use of the Home for the purpose of carrying on their nefarious work without our having the slightest knowledge of such things.”
This argument was so logical that Larry did not contest its truth. These cunning men who formed the gang might use the Home with impunity, if they exercised care in their movements and maintained silence. Frankly, he acknowledged the reasonableness of Mr. Dearborn’s argument.
“I quite appreciate the possibility,” he said. “It is rather unfortunate for you as well as for me. It might have been a great deal more unfortunate,” he added with truth. Though how unfortunately this adventure might have ended he had to learn when the girl told her story on the way to Scotland Yard.
“Dreadful, dreadful!” he shuddered. “My poor, poor child!”
His own relief had been so great that he felt physically ill. But no such reaction was visible in the girl, who grew calmer and brighter as the taxi neared Scotland Yard. She wore his raincoat, and they had stopped in the Edgware Road to allow her to buy a blouse, for she insisted upon going to Scotland Yard first to make her statement.
“I’m rather sorry for Dearborn,” he said. “He is a pathetic figure. Men who devote their lives to this kind of work may be excused even their feeble dramatic efforts. Did you notice how eagerly he shook hands with you?”
She looked at him sharply.
“Yes, I noticed that,” she said in a strange tone.
“Why, Diana,” he said, “what do you mean?”
“Oh, nothing,” she said lightly. “I mean that he took my hand, that is all, and shook it very heartily.”
“Well, there’s nothing in that,” said Larry with a smile.
“There is a great deal in that,” said the girl, “a great deal more than you can realize.”
He leaned back in the cab and laughed softly.
“You’re going to mystify me. I can feel it coming on,” he said, and she squeezed his arm affectionately.
He sent her up to 47 alone, and she had changed her torn blouse for the new purchase by the time he discreetly knocked at the door.
“By the way,” he said, “I forgot to ask you. Where did you dig up that deadly-looking weapon I saw in your hand as you were coming down the stairs?”
“From Blind Jake’s pocket,” she said. “Ugh! It was horrid touching him, but I wanted to be quite sure that I had some kind of weapon.”
“Undoubtedly you have a big end of the story,” he said. “We know now that Blind Jake and the man Lew——”
“Have you left him there?” she asked quickly.
He smiled a little wryly.
“I’ve made too many mistakes in this case to add to them,” he said. “No, I have taken this man to another institution where he is being looked after. Lew and Jake were the two men who were employed, either before or after the murder of Gordon Stuart,” he went on. “The gang has probably got a hold on Lew, and he was anxious to escape from their clutches or to be avenged upon them for some treachery they have committed, and he wrote the message which we found—on the strip of paper with the Braille characters. That fines the search down to one man, because we can find means of inducing Lew to understand whose hands he is in.”
“And the greatest discovery of all you haven’t touched,” she said quietly.
Larry got up from his chair, laughing, and paced the room, a favourite occupation of his.
“You’re an extraordinary girl,” he said. “No sooner do I think I have got the case set, than you produce something new, something more important in the shape of clues, and something generally,” he added pensively, “that upsets all my previous theories.”
“I don’t think this will,” she said. “I am referring to the woman upstairs.”
“What woman upstairs?” he asked, astounded.
“Do you remember I told you that Jake pointed with his thumb to the ceiling, and said if I had a face like hers——” She stopped.
“I’m sorry,” he said gently. “I’m a brute and a forgetful brute; but things have happened to-day which have driven the Stuart case out of my mind. And that reminds me,” he said, “I want to telephone.”
He called a number, and she recognized it as the number of the Trafalgar Hospital.
“I want the matron’s office, please,” he said, and whilst she was wondering where his mind had led him, he said: “Is that you, matron? It is I, Larry Holt. Yes, how do you do? Are the nurses you send out to cases having a slack time? I mean, are there plenty to go round? There are? Well, will you send a nice motherly lady to my address at Regent’s Gate Gardens? You know where I live? No, I’m not ill,” he smiled, “but I have somebody with me who isn’t too well—yes, a lady.”
He hung up the receiver and turned to meet the girl’s astonished eyes.
“Have you a lady staying with you?” she asked.
“I haven’t, but I shall have,” said Larry. “You’re not going back to Charing Cross Road to-night except to get the things you require; you’re coming up to my flat, and there you’re going to stay, chaperoned by a very nice nurse, and you’ll greatly oblige me if you’ll pretend that you’re a little bit under the weather. I must save my face.”
“But I can’t, it’s impossible!” she said, scarlet of face. “I couldn’t——”
“Oh, yes, you could,” said Larry. “Now you’re going to do as I tell you. Otherwise, it means that I must sit outside your flat all night catching my death of cold.”
Finally she consented. They dined together, and he took her to see two acts of the Dearborn play. They came out at the end of the second act, bewildered.
“But how could anybody put such awful stuff on the stage?” asked the girl on their way to his flat.
“It is rather amazing, isn’t it?”
Then Larry began to chuckle.
“You’re easily amused to-day,” she said.
“I’m very happy to-night,” he corrected. “It just occurred to me that Sunny will have to meet the nurse when she comes.”
“Whatever will he say?” she gasped.
“Well,” drawled Larry, “if the nurse insists there’s a lady ill in the house, Sunny will say, ‘Yes, madam,’ and will do his best to produce one!”
It was past eleven when they got to the flat. The elevators had stopped running at half-past ten, and they had to walk up the stairs.
“Watch your step,” warned Larry. “They light these stairways abominably.”
He went first, and she saw him pause on the top step of the second flight.
“Great Scott! Who’s that?” he asked.
Against his door a man was lying, doubled up and still. Larry leant over him and rang the bell, and Sunny came to the door.
In the flood of light thrown by the hall lamp Larry saw the face of the prostrate figure. He was breathing stertorously, and his face and his head streamed with blood.
“Sunny, has the nurse arrived?”
“Yes, sir,” said Sunny, looking down at the figure.
“Then she’ll be wanted,” said Larry quietly.
“Who is it?” asked Diana, peering round behind him.
“Flash Fred,” said Larry, “and as near to dead as makes no difference.”
They carried the injured man into the sitting room and laid him on a couch. There was a doctor living in the flat above and luckily he had not gone to bed, and was down in a few minutes.
“He is badly injured,” he reported. “There are one or two knife wounds, and the wound in the head looks as though there were a fracture of the skull.”
“The man must have been attacked outside my door,” said Larry. “He couldn’t have walked far in this condition.”
“No,” said the doctor, shaking his head. “He might have walked two or three yards, but the chances are, as you found him outside the door, that he was there when the attack was made on him. Do you know him?”
“Yes,” said Larry, “he is an old acquaintance of mine. Is there any danger of his dying?”
“A very big danger,” replied the doctor gravely. “That concussion may be anything. I should send him straight away to hospital, where he can be thoroughly examined and, if necessary, operated upon.”
The ambulance had come and gone, and the only evidence of Flash Fred’s visit was a few dark stains about the door, before Larry began to think consecutively.
The nurse who had arrived fulfilled all his telephoned requirements. She was stout and jovial and matronly, and the first use Larry made of his freedom from distraction was to tell her in a few words just why she had been sent for.
“Obviously I could not allow Miss Ward to go back to Charing Cross Road after her terrible experience to-day,” he said, and Nurse James, who was by no means dissatisfied with having so easy a “case,” agreed.
She exercised her authority to the extent of ordering Diana to bed immediately, and the girl meekly obeyed. But she could not sleep. At two o’clock Larry, writing at his table, heard the creak of an opening door and looked up to see her. She was in her dressing-gown, and her hair was braided in a long golden plait.
“I can’t sleep,” she said restlessly, almost irritably, and he saw that she was overstrung and rose to get an armchair for her.
She neither apologized for her attire nor her visitation, and these circumstances struck Larry as curious. But that which was on Diana Ward’s mind was of so great an importance that the thought of decorum did not occur to her. She sat there, her hands folded on her lap, and there was no sound save the tick of a clock on the mantelpiece and the squeak of Larry’s chair as it turned.
“What is troubling you, Diana?” he asked.
She looked up at him quickly.
“Do you think I’m troubled?” she said.
“If you’re not, you’re a wonderful girl,” said Larry gently. “You’ve had an awful time to-day, my dear, but somehow I do not think that that is what is on your mind.”
She shook her head.
“It isn’t,” and added, “it is the woman upstairs.”
“The woman upstairs? Oh, you mean the woman that Jake spoke about? But, Diana, there was no ‘upstairs.’ You were on the top floor of that building, which is a story lower than Todd’s Home.”
But still she was not satisfied.
“Besides,” he went on quietly, “if she had been there, the woman may have been—as bad a character as any of the other occupants of that house. The fact that she was unpleasant to look at, as Jake suggested, does not make her innocent.”
“Poor soul, poor soul!” said the girl, and then to Larry’s horror she began to weep softly. “I can’t sleep for thinking of her,” she sobbed. “They will keep her, they dare not let her go!”
“Why,” he gasped suddenly, “you don’t suggest that she is Clarissa Stuart?”
She looked up at that, her face stained with tears.
“Clarissa Stuart?” she repeated slowly. “No, I don’t think she is Clarissa Stuart.”
“Then who is she?” he asked. “At any rate, who do you think she is?”
“I don’t think—I am sure,” she said, speaking with painful slowness. “That woman was Emma, the charwoman of the boarding house,” and Larry jumped to his feet.
“The charwoman,” he said slowly. “You’re right!”
Again the tick of the little clock asserted itself as they sat, busy with their own thoughts.
“You connect this terrible gang with the Stuart mystery?” he said.
She nodded.
“I also connect them,” said Larry, “for very excellent reasons. And yet I cannot see what they gained by Stuart’s death, unless they were in league with this girl who calls herself Clarissa Stuart?”
She made a hopeless little gesture and rose.
“I can connect them all,” she said. “They are very distinct in their relationships, but then,” with a faint smile, “I have an advantage over you.”
“You have many advantages over me,” said Larry, humouring her. “And now, dear, you must go back and sleep.”
But she did not heed him.
“There is only one I did not connect,” she went on, “and you have made his case understandable.”
“Who is that?”
“Flash Fred,” she replied. “He is just a criminal who has touched the fringe of the conspiracy and has been in it without knowing he was in it.” She nodded as though she had only at that moment decided her point of view. “But the others? Blind Jake who works for an unknown master; the charwoman, the greatest victim of them all; poor Lew, with his deaf ears and his blistered fingers—you didn’t see those. I should have told you, only the doctor interrupted us.”
“Blistered fingers?” said Larry in amazement. “No, I didn’t see them.”
“I felt them,” she shuddered, “when he touched my face. His fingers and thumbs have been blistered at the tops.”
“But why?”
“So that he shall not read Braille or write Braille,” said the girl quietly.
“It’s impossible, impossible!” said Larry in horror. “There cannot be such villainy in the world. My child, I have been acquainted with some of the worst crimes that have ever been committed in Europe. I have seen the victims, I have tracked and hanged the criminals. Men are cruel, vicious, unscrupulous, and bloody-minded, but they do not commit such cold-blooded deeds as you say have been committed upon that poor blind man.”
She smiled again.
“I don’t think you realize just how bad these people are,” she said. “For if you did, you would never say that it was impossible. For Dearborn——” she began, and he laughed outright.
“Diana, dear, you’ve reached the stage which we always reach, when you’re suspicious of everybody! Not of poor John Dearborn, working for the good of humanity in that slum, and amidst those fearful people?”
She nodded.
“I shook hands with John Dearborn when I went there. I shook hands with him when I came away,” she said.
“That doesn’t make him a criminal,” he smiled.
“And when I offered my hand he took it,” she said. “Please remember that I was a nurse in a blind asylum for two years—when I offered my hand he took it.”
“Well, why shouldn’t he?” asked Larry in surprise.
“He shouldn’t have seen it,” said the girl, “if he was blind. And John Dearborn is no more blind than you or I!”