Larry jerked open the gates on the ground floor, and staggered from the lift-shaft to meet the dumbfounded Dr. Judd standing in an attitude of surprise, and incredulity expressed on every line of his countenance.
“Whatever has happened?” he demanded anxiously.
“A miracle!” said Larry, with a touch of grimness. “I seem to have fallen about four feet. You sent for me, Dr. Judd.”
Dr. Judd shook his head.
“I’m afraid I don’t understand what this is all about,” he said. “Will you come up to my office?”
“I don’t think that is necessary,” said Larry. “You sent a telephone message asking me to come here at once because you had something important to communicate to me. I’m going up,” he said viciously. “There’s a gentleman on the top floor whose acquaintance I should like to make.”
“I assure you, Mr. Holt,” said the doctor earnestly, “that I have never sent for you or communicated with you in any way. I sent my porter out on a message and then remembered that I hadn’t any cigarettes and foolishly left this great building unattended. You didn’t step into the wrong lift, did you?”
A slow smile came to Larry’s face.
“I rather fancy I did,” said he.
“Good heavens!” gasped the doctor. “Why, you might have been killed!”
“I don’t exactly know what happened as it is,” said Larry.
“Only one lift is working,” explained the doctor. “Something went wrong with the motors and we’re working them on balance. That is to say, one elevator comes down while the other goes up. Taking advantage of the fact that to-morrow is Sunday, the workmen were repairing the floor of number two elevator, which has worn rather thin——”
“And spread some pieces of paper and canvas in its place, I presume?” said Larry, who was impolite and well aware of the fact. “Anyway, I’m going up now,” he said, and they went together in the sound elevator.
Harvey was halfway down to his chief, and they met him.
“Thank God you’re not hurt,” he said.
Larry shook his head.
“I could have only been six feet from the ground when I dropped. I didn’t realize that this infernal elevator was descending all the time the gentleman was shying things at me.”
“Somebody throwing at you, sir? I thought I heard a bit of iron strike the bottom of the shaft.”
The elevator only went as far as the fourth floor. The upper floor was reached by a stairway. Larry came up to the darkened landing to find, as he had expected, that his assailant had gone. Which way he had gone there was no need to ask, for in the ceiling at the end of the passage was a square patch of light where a trap-door had been raised, and beneath there was a pair of steps.
“I can’t tell you how sorry I am,” said Dr. Judd, when they rejoined him.
He looked unusually pale and his voice quavered.
“Some fool must have played a practical joke which might have had very serious consequences. How did you save yourself?”
But Larry was in no mood for narrative, and he left a perturbed Dr. Judd with a curt “Good-night.”
“And to-morrow, Harvey,” said Larry, “I shall be at the office at half-past nine, and I want you to be there to meet me. The clearing-up process begins in earnest to-morrow and this day week, please God, there will be no Stuart mystery.”
* * * * *
“My dear,” said Larry Holt at breakfast the next morning, and his tone was at once paternal and apprehensive, “I said one large prayer last night, and it was one of thankfulness that your prophecy is coming true.”
“About capturing the gang?” she asked.
“Something like that,” said he, rising.
“Are you going without me?” she asked in surprise as he rose from the table.
“Yes,” he hesitated, “I am going to pursue a little clue which may be a very big clue indeed.”
She looked at him doubtfully.
“I couldn’t come with you, I suppose?” she asked.
He shook his head.
“No, this is a job which I must do entirely on my own,” he said. “Anyway, it is necessary that I should break the law to make my investigations, and I cannot be responsible for leading you from the straight path.”
“I don’t think it would worry me very much,” she smiled, “but you don’t want to tell me, that’s it, isn’t it?”
“You’ve guessed it first time,” said Larry. “The noble Sunny will look after you and escort you to Scotland Yard, and he will be bulging with weapons of a lethal character.”
Sunny blushed, but recovered immediately.
“Yes, sir,” said he, “I’m thinking of sending your overcoat to be cleaned for the winter.”
“What on earth has that to do with escorting Miss Ward to Scotland Yard?” asked Larry in astonishment.
“Nothing, sir,” said Sunny, “except it will be very cold round about November, and they take a long time to clean overcoats.”
“In fact,” said the girl with a smile, “Sunny is being nicely domestic and is taking a very optimistic view of the outcome of this case. Where will this clue lead you?” she asked. “I’d rather like to know, because——” She stopped. “Well, in case you are ever missing.”
“It is leading me to Hampstead,” said Larry.
She drew a deep sigh.
“I was dreadfully afraid it was somewhere else,” she said.
He wondered why she was afraid, but it was not a subject that he wished to pursue because he had lied outrageously.
Half an hour after he reached the Yard, two slightly soiled men in the shabby uniform of the North Metropolitan Gas Company walked out the Whitehall end of Scotland Yard, one carrying a bag of tools, and boarded a bus. They were set down within a quarter of a mile of their destination and walked the remainder of the journey, stopping to survey the house wherein Larry had decided would be found the solution of Gordon Stuart’s death.
It was an unusual-looking house, bare and grim, with few windows, and those heavily barred.
“The man who planned that must have thought he was designing a prison, sir,” said Harvey.
“Maybe he was,” replied Larry. “Harvey, if what Lew the blind man told us is true, then we have come to the end of the chase.”
Harvey was shocked.
“But this is only a look-over, sir,” he said. “You don’t really expect to finish the case on this one inspection?”
Larry nodded.
“When I enter that house I am pulling into material shape every dream I have dreamt, every theory I have evolved. I stand or fall by the result.”
“Does Miss Ward know——?” began Harvey boldly.
“This is the one thing that Miss Ward doesn’t know,” smiled Larry. Crossing the road, he mounted the steps and rang the bell.
The door was opened by a manservant, and to him Larry Holt spoke shortly and with authority, and they were ushered into the hall.
“Remember, you are to keep our visit a secret,” said Larry.
“You can depend on me, Mr. Holt,” said the man, who had turned a sickly green at the detective’s appearance.
The hall was wide and lofty, panelled in oak from the tessellated marble floor to the ceiling. The only furniture was a table and a chair, Larry noted. There were no lights visible, and he gathered that illumination was furnished by lamps concealed in the cornices. Other illuminations were furnished by a long, narrow window of frosted glass, through which the shadow of the bars could be seen. There was no stairway leading from the hall, but there was a doorway immediately facing the street door, which Larry guessed concealed the staircase. On the other side of the hall was a second door, and these were the only apparent means of egress from the passage.
He opened the door on the right and found himself in a large and beautifully furnished salon. The walls were hung about with pictures and tapestries, and on the polished floor were half a dozen Persian rugs, which Larry could see were worth a fortune.
There were six stained-glass windows in this room, and each was a masterpiece. By their side hung heavy velvet curtains which could be so drawn that the window excluded all light. One silver electrolier hung in the middle of the apartment, and there were no other lights, though here again Larry supposed that the main illumination came from concealed lamps.
He walked across to the big fireplace with its silver grate and fixtures, and examined two letters which lay open upon a table by the side of the big armchair. They were of no importance, and he continued his search.
From the main apartment another door opened on to a flight of stairs, which led to a suite of bedrooms, a little drawing room, and a large study, which was over the salon and covered practically the same area.
His search upstairs was more or less perfunctory, though his examination of the corridor from whence the bedrooms gave was of a more careful and exacting character. But he came down again to the salon, satisfied in his mind that what had to be discovered was to be looked for on the lower floor.
He found the servant in the room when he came down and dismissed him sharply.
“Go back to the hall,” he said, and sulkily the man obeyed.
And now Larry gave every minute to an examination of the panelled walls of the room—particularly that wall which was opposite the door through which he and Harvey had entered. So cunningly had the panelling been arranged that it was a long time before he found the concealed door; and then it was not where he had been looking, but on a level with the stained-glass window. He remembered then having seen from the outside a small semicircular obtrusion from the main wall of the building.
“Here we are, Harvey!” he said exultantly, as he pulled up a carved wreath which seemed to be part of the wall’s decorations and disclosed a tiny keyhole. He took the packet of keys from his pocket and tried first one and then the other. At the fourth trial a lock slipped back and the door opened inwards.
He was right! He knew it at that moment. The joy of accomplishment set his heart beating faster—the knowledge that he had at last a tangible something to show, not to the Commissioner, not to his superiors, but to the girl who was more to him than career or life, brought a new colour to his cheeks and a brighter light to his eyes.
He was in a small bell-shaped apartment, with a domed roof, a room so small that the door, when it was opened, touched the opposite wall. It was made of concrete, and a flight of steps leading down to the cellar were also of this material.
The first thing that caught his eye was an electric switch and this he snapped down, illuminating a lower landing. There was another door to the left, and a further flight of steps which disappeared in darkness. No effort had been made to conceal the keyhole of the door, and one of his keys opened it.
He found himself in a low-roofed concrete chamber, about five foot six in height and, as near as he could judge, about ten feet square. He searched for, and found, the electric switch and illuminated the apartment.
“What do you think of this, Harvey?”
“What are they running?” asked Harvey in surprise. “An electric light plant?”
Larry shook his head.
“No,” he said, “this isn’t a light plant. I know very little about machinery, but I have an idea that this gadget is a pump.”
He examined the machinery more carefully.
“Yes, it is a pump,” he said, “one of the type which is used in ships to trim the ballast tanks.”
A thick cable was suspended on brackets along the wall, and he felt this gingerly.
“Electric,” he said. “This is where he gets his power.”
On the wall was a switchboard and what seemed an independent lever. He examined this closely and before he went on to yet another machine.
“And this is the ventilating plant,” he said, pointing to a barrel-shaped instrument. “You notice the bad-air exhaust?”
“He’s a thorough gentleman, this,” said Sergeant Harvey.
“Very,” agreed Larry, and they walked out of the room, locking the door behind them.
“A door over there leading to the yard,” said Larry, pointing to the wall opposite the machine-room.
Harvey saw no door, but followed his leader down a further flight of stairs.
“Ten steps,” Larry warned, and then he came against a door. A heavy door of ferro-concrete hung upon hinges of toughened bronze. This Larry confirmed before he went any farther. He expected to find bronze, and would have been surprised if the hinges had been made of any other material. He had two fears: one that the doors would be fitted with bolts, and the other that they were impossible to open from the inside. This latter fear, he saw, was groundless, for the keyhole was covered from the outside by a screw cap. He twisted the cover off and opened the door. It swung back heavily, and he measured the edge.
“Four inches thick!” he said grimly. “He takes no chances.”
Behind the first door was another of steel, and this, too, he unlocked. And now he paused and he felt his breath grow laboured.
“Take note of this room to which we are coming,” said Larry Holt, “for it was here that Gordon Stuart died!”
He carried a flash-lamp in his hand, but it was some time before he discovered the switch, which was set high in the wall, near the sloping roof of the stairs on the farthermost side of the door. A click, and the void before them was illuminated. He could see nothing from where he stood save a brass bedstead destitute of clothing. Down two steps and three paces along a narrow passage, and he was in the room. Floor, roof, and walls were of cement-work, and he saw that what he had thought was one was really two rooms, the second being fitted up roughly as a bathroom. There were no windows of any kind, and he had not expected them. The air was heavy and stale, and evidently the two ventilators near the ceiling were not in working order.
But it was not the bathroom nor the bedstead to which his eyes strayed; it was to a great block of granite in the centre of the room. In the stone, which was a cube two feet in each direction, was a large steel bolt, and from this bolt ran a thin rusted chain, also of steel. Each yard of the chain ran through a block of lead, which Larry judged to be ten pounds in weight, and there were three of these. The chain terminated in a brass leg-ring.
“Yes,” said Larry, “I think so.”
He picked up the ring and examined it, and, trying first one and then the other of his keys upon the little lock, the opening of which was protected by a sliding cover, presently he saw the two catches snap back, and heaved a sigh.
“Thank God for that!” he said. “I was afraid I’d missed the key.”
He looked round at Harvey and Harvey’s face was a study.
“What is this, Mr. Holt?” he asked, bewildered.
“The operating room of the ‘Dark Eyes,’ ” replied Larry briefly.
“Do you mean to say that these devils——”
Larry nodded. He was walking around the walls, looking for a place where he could conceal the waterproof bag he carried in his pocket. There was not so much as a crack into which it could be hidden, for the big holes set in the wall near the floor at regular intervals were, he knew, of no value for his purpose. Then his eye fell upon the granite block, and, exerting all his strength, he pulled at it. Slowly it canted away. There had been no necessity to cement to the floor a block of that weight.
“Give me a hand to ease this down, Harvey,” he said, and the two men lowered the block on its side.
It had fitted truly, and its base was perhaps only an inch deeper than the floor. Where it had stood the workmen had not taken the trouble to make its foundations secure, and there was a depression in the cement, irregular and shallow, but large enough for Larry’s purpose. He took the waterproof bag—it was no more than a sponge bag—from his pocket and began to drop various articles into the bottom. Key followed key and then:
“A handcuff key, if you’ve got one, Harvey,” he said. “I left mine in my room.”
Harvey found a handcuff key in his waistcoat pocket and passed it across to his superior.
“And this, I think,” said Larry, and took something from his pocket and placed it in the bag.
He smoothed the bag and its contents as flat as possible, and it just fitted into the depression. Then the two men lifted the stone and put it back in its place.
“May I ask,” said the bewildered Harvey, “what is the idea?”
Larry laughed, and his laugh sounded hollow in that dreadful room, which had never heard laughter.
“Is the servant in this?” asked Harvey.
“I’m perfectly sure he isn’t. This gang wouldn’t trust a servant,” replied Larry. “No, he probably keeps to his own part of the house, and doesn’t even enter the reception room except when his boss is at home, unless he is sent for. If you notice this house, it has been built for a specific purpose. For example, the room has a vacuum bracket in the wainscot, there is an electric lift from the kitchen, and a private stairway to the bedrooms and study upstairs. My theory is, but I haven’t time to confirm it, that the servant lives in practically a house of his own, which has no connection with this part of the building. Did you notice a door opposite what I would call the engine-room? It wasn’t easy to spot because it looked like the rest of the wall. In reality, it is of iron, camouflaged as concrete. It is on the ground level and leads to the yard at the side of the house, and incidentally to the garage.”
Harvey shouldered his tools.
“This is a horrible place, Mr. Holt,” he said with a shudder. “In all my thirty-five years of police experience I have never been so—shocked. It sounds silly to you?”
“Not a bit,” said Larry quietly. “I am shocked beyond words.”
“You really think that that is the place where these people have been done to death?”
“I’m certain of it,” said Larry. “In that room Gordon Stuart went over to the other side.”
They went back in the hall now. By the side of the door there was a narrow slit of a window covered by a strip of silk casement cloth, and Harvey went to this and pulled it aside.
“There’s a car at the door,” he said. “Just come up.”
Larry stepped to his side and looked. A man had descended from a taxicab and was paying the driver.
“The Reverend Mr. Dearborn,” said Larry. “How interesting!”
Larry hesitated only for a second, then he opened the door, and the Rev. John Dearborn, who had turned from the cab, and whose hand was on the spikes of the gate, bent his head suddenly as though he had remembered something, and beckoned the cabman.
“My friend,” he said, “I cannot see you, but are you still there?”
“Yes, sir,” replied the cabman.
“I have remembered that I wish to call at the post office. Will you take me there?”
His hand groped out and the cabman took it, and leaning back opened the door again.
Before Larry could get down the steps the cab was on the move. The detective turned back with a little smile.
“David Judd can wait,” he said softly.
“David Judd?” said Harvey.
“David Judd!” repeated Larry Holt. “Who said this is not an age of miracles, when the blind can see as John Dearborn sees, and David Judd, dead and buried, is rollicking round London in a taxicab? Harvey, there’s a great detective in this city.”
“There is, sir,” said Sergeant Harvey heartily. “And the name of the same is Holt.”
“It isn’t, but it will be,” said Larry softly.
“Wait!” said Larry. He was on the point of leaving the House of Death. “We may not get another opportunity of making a leisurely examination of these premises. I am curious about the side door.” He led the way to the secret door in the salon, closing it behind him, then down the steps he passed and paused opposite the engine-room.
“Here is the door to the yard, I think,” he said, and switched his flash-lamp over the wall.
The keyhole was difficult to find, but he discovered it after a while near the floor in the bottom right-hand corner. As he had expected, it opened on to a covered passageway from the road.
“Clever work,” he said in honest admiration.
He was in the yard looking at the wall through which he had come. Nothing like a door was visible. Instead he looked upon something which had the appearance of a window made up of four opaque panes. It stood out from the wall in the most natural fashion, a trim window-box filled with flowers on its ledge.
“Not much like a door!” said Larry, and added, “Clever work!”
He walked back to the gate and examined it closely. Then he returned to Harvey.
“The mystery of the automatic gate is solved,” he said. “As I suspected, it is possible to reach the house and enter the yard and garage without the servants knowing anything at all about it. The last time I was here, I noticed what looked to be two peep-holes placed at a distance of four feet apart and rather low. They couldn’t have been intended for purposes of observation because they were backed with iron. Did you notice anything about that car we saw in the laundry garage?”
“Yes, sir,” said Harvey, “there were two bars sticking out in front under the head-lamps,” and Larry nodded.
“I thought at first,” he said, “that it was some new kind of motor-car invention, but it is clear now just what they are intended for. A car is driven up to the gate, and those two bars fit in what I called the peep-holes; a lock is pressed back and the door opens, and presumably closes behind them, thus dispensing with the attendance of any servants and avoiding the inconvenience of their coming and going being noted by the people in the house. I think we will look at the garage, and then we will go,” he said.
The door of the garage was at the far end of the drive and extended across its whole width. Larry searched amongst his keys, and presently he found what he was looking for.
“I wondered what door this tumbler lock was on,” he said.
He slipped the key in the hole and turned it, and as he did so he heard a slight movement within the garage.
“Did you hear that?” he said in a whisper.
Harvey nodded, and drew his truncheon. Then suddenly Larry threw open the gates wide. He saw a car, but apparently the garage was empty of people. The wheels of the car were wet.
“That came in this morning,” said Larry.
There was no place where the smallest of men could conceal himself, he thought. And then he heard a scream, shrill and painful, the scream of someone in agony, and he sprang to the door of the big limousine and pulled it open. Then a tornado loosed itself at him—a great, gibbering shape leapt at the two men and by sheer weight flung them down, dropping his huge mass upon them.
Larry was stunned for a second, and then, as he struggled to his feet, he heard the door of the garage slammed and the click of the lock as the key was turned. The two men threw themselves at the door, but it did not give an inch.
“The woman!” cried Harvey suddenly, and pointed to the car.
There was an inert heap lying there, and Larry leapt on to the step and, lifting her out in his arms, carried her to where a ray of light penetrated from the small roof window.
It was a woman of fifty, gray and bedraggled. Her face had not known soap or water for weeks; her hands were almost black. But now through the grime her white face showed in a deathly grin, and the claw-marks of Blind Jake stood out in purple relief upon her lean throat.
“Get some water, Harvey; there’s a faucet there,” said Larry, loosening the woman’s blouse. “She’s alive,” he said. And then he realized. “My God!” he said in a low voice. “It is the charwoman!”
Whilst he attended to the poor wretched creature, Harvey had searched the garage and had discovered an axe. In five minutes the lock was smashed and the door was open.
“Take this gun,” said Larry, slipping his revolver from his pocket. “It hasn’t been much use to me, but if you see that swine, shoot him. Don’t argue with him or think you can stop him with your truncheon, Harvey.”
But Blind Jake had gone, as he knew. That blind man, with the most precious of his faculties destroyed, had again been a match for him.
The woman was showing some signs of a return to life. Larry had dragged her into the air and was sprinkling water on her neck and face. Her eyes fluttered and opened, and she looked up with a frown.
“Where is Miss Clarissa?” she asked thickly.
“That is what I am going to ask you,” said Larry.
The cab came soon after, and they carried the woman through the side door, up the steps, and through the beautiful salon. They paused to set her down in the reception room, and Larry looked round at the evidence of comfort and luxury, bought with the suffering and misery of God knows how many innocent souls who had died that this villainy should be gilded and scented and live in fragrance.
Then his eyes dropped upon the incongruous figure that lay on a thousand-pound Persian rug, who had done no harm but know and recognize Stuart, and must for that reason be condemned to hide in dark places under the care of a fiend like Blind Jake.
Strauss, the ex-convict butler, waited in the hall, nervously rubbing his hands.
“You’re not in this, are you?” asked Larry.
“No, sir,” said the man shakily. “I thought when you came that my gentleman had sent you, because I had—found a few things.”
“Like a black enamelled link, eh?” said Larry. “How many pairs did he have of those?”
“Two pairs, sir. I had to tell him when he asked me what had become of them, because really I did not steal them—he had half given them to me because three of the brilliants were missing.”
“Don’t worry, Strauss,” said Larry. “He has got them back now, though he had to burgle a pawnbroker’s to get them.”
A knot of idlers gathered on the pavement to watch the spectacle of two, apparently officials of a gas company, carry an unsavoury woman, who looked seventy, down the steps into the cab.
She had recovered consciousness before the cab had gone far, and was trembling violently, looking from one to the other of the men.
“You’re all right now, Emma,” said Larry kindly.
“Emma?” she repeated. “Do you know me, sir?”
“Yes, I know you,” said Larry.
“Then I’m safe?” she said eagerly. “Oh, thank God for that! You don’t know what I’ve been through! You don’t know what I’ve been through!”
“I can guess,” said Larry.
“Where are you taking her?” asked Harvey in a low voice. “I didn’t hear what you told the cabman.”
“I am taking her to my flat,” said Larry, and Sergeant Harvey looked his surprise. “I can’t afford to fill the hospitals with the witnesses for the crime,” said Larry with a faint smile. “And, besides, this woman is not ill; she’s just tired and hungry.”
“That’s right,” said Emma eagerly. “I know I must look terrible, but they never gave me a chance of washing myself. They dragged me from one hole to another. I’m not a common woman, sir, although I’ve done charwoman’s work. I was nursemaid and brought up a little girl, sir—the daughter of my missis. Brought her up like a lady, sir. Little Clarissa Stuart.”
“Clarissa Stuart?”
“I called her Clarissa, sir,” said Emma. “If I could only see her again!”
“You called her Clarissa,” said Larry slowly. “Was not that her name?”
“Yes, sir,” said the woman. “Clarissa Diana, but I used to call her Diana.”
Larry started back as though he had been shot.
“What is your name?” he asked in a husky voice.
“Emma Ward, sir. Diana Ward I called the young lady, but Diana Stuart is her real name, and her father is in London.”
“Diana Stuart!” repeated Larry slowly. “Then Diana Stuart is the heiress to whom Stuart left his money. Diana Stuart!” he repeated in a tone of wonder. “My Diana!”
Mrs. Emma Ward had told him practically all there was to tell about herself before the cab had drawn up at the entrance of the flat.
It was she who had failed to register the birth of Diana and her twin sister, and this failure had, curiously enough, saved her life; for when the gang had discovered, as they did a few hours earlier than Larry, that Gordon Stuart had left an enormous fortune to the daughter whose existence he had discovered through an accidental meeting with the charwoman at Nottingham Place, they lost no time in securing the one witness who could prove the legality and the circumstances of Diana’s birth.
Never had Larry so congratulated himself upon any event as he did upon the fact that he had engaged a chaperon for Diana. Once before had that nurse been useful; and now she took charge of the unhappy woman who, to the scandal of the neighbourhood, he brought to his flat; and it was a presentable and tidy lady of middle age who came into his sitting room an hour after her arrival within reach of hot water and clean towels.
“I am going now to see Miss”—he baulked at the word—“Miss Stuart,” he said.
The woman started.
“Do you know where she is?”
“Oh, yes,” said Larry, “I know! She has been with me for——” He was on the point of saying “years” and honestly believing the word he framed; and then, with a queer sense of surprise, he realized that weeks, and very few weeks at that, would most accurately describe the length of his friendship with “Miss Diana Ward.”
He had thought of telephoning the news to her, but somehow he wanted to tell her himself; and there were other things he had to say—things which were hard to think about. He thought it all over on the way to the Yard. Diana Ward, poor and dependent, was a different girl from Clarissa Stuart, an heiress to millions of dollars. He could ask Diana Ward to marry him and look forward with happiness to a union where each brought to the other only the treasure of love. Diana Stuart was a rich woman. He did not doubt that she would be sweet and generous and desirous that the marriage should go through; but after a time she would realize how enormous were the possibilities which great possessions offer. And then she would regret in a nice way, he told himself; for he defended her even as he accused her. And that was the end of the case, he thought. Kudos would come to him, though he could take no credit for that; and the long-deferred promotion—that also would come and he would sit in the office, an Assistant Commissioner, and exercise his function. But all the success he had secured was Diana’s. Hers was the brain that had disentangled the knottiest of the problems and had made the tangle of clues into one straight case.
It was curious that he did not also credit her with having discovered even more. Perhaps it was the natural vanity which is latent in all men which made him guard so jealously the claim to one achievement—the discovery of her identity.
The end of the case! And the end of all hope for him, as he knew. There was never another woman in the world like Diana Ward. She was the first in his heart and should be the last. He had renounced her in his mind and had drawn a gray veil over the future by the time he stood outside Room 47 with his hand upon the door-knob, hardly daring to turn it because of the loss which would be his. And his first words expressed aloud the thought that followed that moment of hesitation.
“Diana,” he said, “I am the most selfish brute in the world.”
She showed all her white teeth in a silent laugh.
“I waited for you for over an hour,” she said.
“Good Lord!” he gasped. “I was taking you to lunch.”
“Yes,” she nodded, “that was what you were talking about?”
He shook his head.
“I wish to Heaven it was,” he said. “There I am again, thinking of myself and being sorry for myself, when I ought to be on my knees, thanking Heaven for the good fortune which has come to you.”
She jumped up.
“You have found Emma!” she said.
“I have found Emma Ward,” he replied slowly, “and I have found—Clarissa Stuart.”
He walked toward her, both hands outstretched.
“Oh, my dear, my dear,” he said, “I am so glad for you.”
She took the hands in hers and lifted one to her cheek.
“Aren’t you glad for yourself, too?”
He was silent, and she looked at him quickly.
“Larry,” she said, “I have known all about this for days and days—ever since the day I fainted at that boarding house in Nottingham Place. Don’t you remember?”
He frowned.
“Of course. But why——”
“Why, you silly,” she said, “I knew it was Aunt Emma’s ring. I always called her ‘aunt,’ though I knew she was not my aunt. And then I guessed who Gordon Stuart was. I knew nothing would make her leave her wedding ring behind. Do you know where she went in such a hurry?”
He shook his head.
“To find me,” she said simply. “I guessed that. I knew it instinctively before I had heard of that ring. My father gave it to her. She used to tell me how she was married when she was in my father’s service, and how my father presented her with this strange wedding ring for all she had done for my mother.”
“You knew!” he said wonderingly. “But you never told me.”
“You went on a chase to-day”—she lifted her finger reproachfully and shook it in his face—“and you never told me! You said you were going to Hampstead and you went to Chelsea.”
“You knew that, too?” he gasped. “Do I get any credit out of this infernal—this case?” he corrected quickly.
“You get me,” she said demurely.
He pressed her hands together.
“Diana, I’ve got a serious talk coming with you, and it’s about——”
“I know what it’s all about,” she said. “You can save yourself the trouble. You can’t marry a rich woman because you’re afraid she’ll want to keep you. You would much rather marry a poor woman—and keep her, if she would submit to that indignity.”
There was fun in the eyes that were raised to his.
“Larry!” She shook his hands with quiet impatience.
“It makes a difference, doesn’t it?” he asked.
“Not to me, Larry,” she replied. “And anyway, it doesn’t matter.” She dropped his hands and walked back to her table. “Because you’ve promised.”
“Promised? What have I promised?”
“Hear this man!” she scoffed. “You promised me that, whatever happened, whatever was the outcome of the Stuart case, it would make no difference to our marriage.”
“Did you know?” he asked in astonishment. “Was that why you made me promise?”
“Of course I knew. I’ve been a rich woman for quite a long time, and I’m so used to the feeling that I can hardly restrain myself from taking a cab whenever I see one!”
He walked over to her and laid his arm about her shoulder.
“Diana——” he began, and then asked: “Or is it Clarissa?”
“Diana, always,” she said.
He kissed her.
“And always.”
The man who called himself the Rev. John Dearborn sat behind the locked door of his study and methodically burnt papers in a little fireplace that was at the back of his chair. His blue glasses he had dispensed with, and under his eyes, keen and alert, the heap of manuscripts, old letters, receipts and other data, were sorted, and melted away until there was only a package left small enough to go into his pocket. He slipped a rubber band round these and put them on one side. Then he took up a heavy wad of manuscripts and dropped it into an open bag which was beside his desk; and as he sorted and read and destroyed, he whistled a little tune thoughtfully.
From one of the drawers in the desk he took out a thicker package of manuscript bound in a stiff cover. He turned the leaves of this idly, and sometimes the excellence of the writing induced him to read on and on.
“That’s damned good,” he said, not once but many times; for John Dearborn was a great admirer of the genius of John Dearborn.
At last, with an air of reluctance, he closed the manuscript volume and put that more reverently in the bag.
The house was empty, for the hawkers had not begun to stray back; and except for the little man who acted as doorkeeper and kept the Home swept and garnished, and the old cook, who was dozing in her kitchen, the Home was deserted.
Presently he finished his packing and patted first one breast-pocket and then the other, until he found the letter he wanted. He took it out and studied it for a while. It was a brief, hand-written note which Larry Holt had written to him the day after his first visit to Todd’s Home. He took up his pen and, with one eye on the copy, he fashioned a word taken from the letter, and compared the two efforts. Then from the open writing-case which lay on the desk he extracted a sheet of headed notepaper and began to write slowly and laboriously, and all the time he wrote he whistled his gay little tune. He finished at last and addressed an envelope, also taken from the writing-case; and when this was blotted, and the letter sealed and put into his pocket, he strapped the case and placed it on the floor by the side of his bag. Then he unlocked a wardrobe let into the wall and took out some clothing, which he laid on the back of a chair; and now he was singing with soft diminuendo, yet with evident enjoyment, one of the “Indian Love Lyrics.”
He stripped his sombre clerical garb, tore away his white choker collar, and began to dress. He was a man about town now in smartly tailored tweeds; and he put the clerical costume into the wardrobe and shut the door. Then he sat down at the table, his face in his hands, thinking, thinking.
He had dressed almost mechanically, and he had a strange feeling of dissatisfaction. All the exits would be guarded; even the panel, the roof-path, the way through the boiler-room.
“I’m mad,” he said, getting up.
He looked down at the bag and the writing-case, and there was regret in his expression. He peeled his coat and slowly undressed again. This time he did not go to the wardrobe, but to a long black box under the window, and he took out various articles of attire and viewed them with distaste.
“A wretched mountebank,” he called himself, and was genuinely contemptuous.
But it had to be this or nothing. Blind Jake could find his way by the underground channel. He had the sharp instincts of the blind, could walk like a cat past the sentinels, and even creep through narrow passages where it seemed impossible that his big frame could go.
John Dearborn dressed and took up a canvas bag from the box, laying it on the table. He turned the contents of his leather grip into this bag, then went to the front room of the Home and looked out into the street. Two policemen, he knew, were guarding the end of the cul-de-sac. Nobody used this front room except himself, for storing odds and ends of furniture, old account-books, and the like; but it had the advantage of possessing a door which was only a few feet from the front door.
He put down his sack and came out, closing the door carefully, before he went back to his study and locked himself in. He sat there for ten minutes waiting, and then came a gentle tap-tap on the panel. He crossed the room noiselessly, opened the door just wide enough for the caller to slip through.
It was Blind Jake, and his face was strained and puffed, and on his broad forehead the blue veins stood out.
“I only just got here, governor,” he said breathlessly.
The other was eyeing him with a steely look.
“What are you doing here, Jake?” he asked softly. “I told you not to leave the woman under any circumstances until I came.”
“Well, you didn’t come, master,” said the blind man. It was pathetic to hear the pleading, the humility, in his tone. His blind eyes were fixed on the cold man whom he loved so well and had served as men serve fate. A great, rough, cruel hound of a man, strong enough to crush and maim the master he worshipped, yet ready to cringe and whine at a sharp word. Blind Jake had given all for John Dearborn, had been the readiest minister of his vengeance and the slave of his cupidity. Blood was on his hands, and there were nights when strange faceless shapes came in and out of his room and were visible. Cold hands touched him on these nights, cold stiff fingers felt for his throat, and he could feel the rough wipings of sodden sleeves and the drip-drip-drip of water.
But, none of these things mattered. The sweat poured down his puckered face, his big lips were dropping, and perhaps the blind man felt some thrill in the atmosphere, for he asked with a little whine:
“Is there anything wrong, governor?”
“Where is the woman?” asked Mr. Dearborn, and his words dropped one by one, like steel pellets.
Blind Jake shifted uneasily on his seat.
“I left her. I couldn’t do——”
“You left her!” Another tremendous pause. “And they found her, eh?” John Dearborn’s voice had grown very soft.
“Yes, they found her,” said the man. “What could I do? Governor, I’d have done anything for you. Haven’t I used my strength for you, master? There’s no one as strong in the world as me, old Blind Jake. There’s no one who can work as cunning as I can! Haven’t I worked for ye; haven’t I carried ’em out for ye? Haven’t I croaked ’em for ye, with these hands, master?”
He held them out: great cruel hands, knotted and roughened, their backs speckled brown, their palms yellow with callosities.
“You lost Holt,” said Dearborn calmly, dispassionately, as a judge might speak. “You lost that woman. You lost the girl. And you come and talk to me of what you have done.”
“I’ve done my best,” said the man humbly.
“And they’ll catch you, too. And you can talk.”
“I’ll have my tongue torn out before I talk against you,” said Blind Jake violently, and smashed his fist down on the table so that it cracked and quivered. “You know that I’d die for you, master?”
“Yes,” said Dearborn.
He slipped his hand, the left hand that had no little finger, under his coat, and pulled out a short, ugly automatic pistol of heavy calibre.
“You’ll talk,” he said. “You’re bound to talk, Jake.”
The man leant forward, his big face working convulsively.
“If I die——” he began. And then John Dearborn, taking deliberate aim, fired three shots, and that great mountain of muscle swayed and slipped by the table into a heap on the ground. Blind Jake’s day had come.
Dearborn slipped the revolver in his pocket, unlocked the door, and stepped out. The little man who acted as porter was standing, his mouth agape.
“What’s wrong?” he said quickly. “Who’s shooting?”
“Go out and fetch the police,” said John Dearborn calmly. “Somebody has been killed.”
“Oh, my heaven!” whispered the little man.
“There are two policemen at the end of the road. Hurry,” said John Dearborn sharply, and listened to the flip-flap of the messenger’s slippers as he shuffled up the street.
Dearborn waited awhile, then entered the front room and closed the door, standing against it listening. He heard the rush of feet, distinguished the policemen, heard them clump through the passage, and the chatter of an idle bystander or two behind them; then he opened the door. A policeman was bending over Blind Jake.
“That’s him all right,” he said. “Jim, clear these people out and stand on duty at the door until the inspector comes. You’d better blow your whistle.”
A police whistle shrilled through Lissom Lane, and the little knot of curiosity-mongers who had been turned unceremoniously from the scene of the tragedy grouped about the door.
“What’s happened?” asked Mr. Dearborn, and the policeman smiled good-naturedly.
“Now, postman,” he said, “you go along and deliver your letters.” And John Dearborn flung his bag over his shoulder.
For he had chosen the uniform of a letter-carrier, and it had proved a most effective cloak. He got away within a few minutes of Larry’s arrival. The detective was on his way to interview Mr. John Dearborn, and the handcuffs he had in his pocket were expressly intended for that gentleman.
Larry saw the little crowd about the door and knew that something unusual had happened. He came to the study and looked silently upon the massive body of his enemy. Blind Jake had died immediately. He had never known what had struck him, or guessed the vile treachery of the employer he had served so well.
“The man must be in the house somewhere, sir,” said the policeman. “This little fellow heard the shots, and the superintendent sent him out to get a policeman. We both came down together, me and my mate.”
“Was the front door left unguarded at all?” asked Larry.
“Only for a second, sir,” said the policeman. “We both came in together.”
“That was the second our friend got away,” said Larry. “I don’t think it’s any use searching the house.”
He was accompanied by the officers who had been charged to effect the arrest of Dearborn, and their inspection and examination of the room produced nothing of importance.
Larry drove back to the Yard and interviewed the Chief Commissioner. Then he went to the girl.
“I’ve heard the news,” she said quietly. “Sergeant Harvey has just been in. Do you think Dearborn’s killed him?”
“Dearborn is David Judd,” said Larry.
“Dr. Judd’s brother?” she said in surprise. “But he’s dead.”
He shook his head.
“That elaborate funeral was well staged, and I am perfectly certain that David even went to the length of providing the body. He is a very thorough gentleman. You remember Lew telling us of his brother who disappeared, a fine-looking fellow with a beard?” She nodded. “That is the man we shall find in David Judd’s grave,” he said.
“Is Dr. Judd——” she began, and there was no need to finish the sentence.
“Dr. Judd is in it up to the neck,” said Larry. “The story of Dearborn is explained very easily. Dearborn was a partner of Judd’s, and something that happened at the office—either some crime or some murder, perhaps, which David had manœuvred in order to draw insurance—had come to the knowledge of one of the clerks. This man stole a large sum of money and went to Montpellier, and from there began to blackmail David. David went after him and shot him. Probably the murder was unpremeditated, because David is not the sort of man who would shoot in the open square. But at any rate he did shoot, and he was seen by Flash Fred, who reached the body in time to learn from the dying man the name of his murderer. To a man of Fred’s calibre, that meant that he had an income for life, and he hastened back to London, saw Dr. Judd, and probably stated the terms on which he would keep his mouth shut. Judd decided that David should conveniently die; and David, you remember, was a fine-looking man with a beard. Of their hirelings or acquaintances they chose Lew’s brother as being the nearest in physical appearance to David, and he was unceremoniously destroyed and buried as David. Incidentally, a very large sum of money was drawn from the underwriters on the heavy insurance policy which had been issued to David.
“They must have had this scheme in mind for some time, for a month before David’s death Dr. Judd had completed the purchase of Todd’s Home. It was not so much a charitable institution as a business proposition, for Todd’s Home had deteriorated into a kind of superior doss-house, frequented by the lowest of the low amongst the blind mendicants of London. It was there that the famous Dark Eyes had their headquarters, and it was from them that David must have learnt of Todd’s.
“The Home was bought, and the day after David’s ‘death’ the Rev. John Dearborn appeared as the new superintendent. It is perfectly true that he cleared out all the bad characters and had certain structural alterations made; but he only did this because he wanted to clear the taint from Todd’s Home, to give it a good character, and to employ the house as his headquarters without fear of police visitations. When the laundry company went broke, it was Judd who bought the premises, and the alterations were carried out by David himself with the assistance of his gang. David, I might remark, is an architect and built the house in which his brother lives. We know they employed foreign workmen, and that that house was built for one specific purpose,” he said gravely.
“With the laundry premises in their possession the Dark Eyes came back to Lissom Lane, and came and went amongst the blind, who could not see them and who were ignorant of their presence.”
“What about Dr. Judd?” she asked.
“I am arresting him,” said Larry. “And I am arresting him in the very place from whence your father disappeared—in that famous Box A at the Macready Theatre.”
“Will he be there?” she asked in surprise.
He nodded.
“He is there almost every evening,” he said quietly.
“But why not take him now?” she asked, puzzled.
“Because Box A and its mystery have yet to be cleared up,” said Larry; “and I have an idea that I shall clear it.”
At eight o’clock that night he walked into the vestibule of the Macready Theatre.
“Dr. Judd, sir?” said the attendant. “Yes, he’s in Box A. Is he expecting you?”
Larry nodded. Harvey was for accompanying him, but the other shook his head.
“I’ll go alone,” said Larry.
He went swiftly down the passage and, stopping only for a second outside Box A, he turned the knob of the door and stepped in.
Dr. Judd’s eyes were fixed on the stage, and the detective had stopped to speak to him when something dropped on his head, something fleecy and warm. It felt like a bag lined with wool. It had been saturated with a chemical which took his breath away and momentarily paralyzed him. Then he felt a string pulled tightly round his neck, and whipped out his pistol. Before he could use it, it was gripped. Something sharp hit the hand that held it, and he let go with a cry of pain, muffled in the bag. Every breath he took choked him. He struck out, but his arms were seized from behind, and he was flung forward on the floor. Dimly he heard the voice of Dearborn:
“The atomizer, Peter!”
A nozzle was pressed under his chin into the bag, and something pungent was sprayed under his nostrils. He tried to fight his way out of their grip, but a knee was in the middle of his back, and then he lost consciousness.
“You’re really a genius, David,” said Dr. Judd almost ecstatically. “So perfectly timed, so beautifully done! Wonderful, dear fellow, wonderful!”
“Open the door and look out, Peter,” said David, and the doctor obeyed.
The passage was empty. Immediately opposite the door of Box A a curtain was draped on the wall, and through this he disappeared, and there came a rush of cold air as he opened the fire-exit door which led to the side street, where a car was waiting.
A minute later David Judd had picked up the detective as easily as though he were a child, had lifted him into the interior of the limousine, and had taken the place at the wheel.
He came to the house in Chelsea, and brought the car with a sweep straight to the closed gates of the covered driveway. In that solid gate were the two big circles, and before David Judd’s car were two steel bars that projected beyond the line of the lamps and just beneath. Slowly and skilfully he brought the car up the inclined slope from the roadway, so that the ends of the two bars rested in the “peep-holes.” Then he drove the machine forward. There was a click and the gates swung open. The car rolled in, and as the wheels passed over a narrow transverse platform that gave slightly under its weight, the doors closed again.
David Judd stopped opposite the door that looked like a window, opened it and, lifting Larry in his arms, passed inside. The lights were burning on the stairs leading to the cell, the doors of which were wide open.
He threw the detective on the bed, picked up the bronze anklet and snapped it about one of Larry’s ankles; and then, and only then, did he pull off the heavy leather bag which covered Larry Holt’s head. It stank of formalhyadine, and he threw it into the bathroom.
Larry’s face was purple; he had all the symptoms of one who had been strangled, but as the night air reached him he gasped. David leant over and felt his pulse, opened his eyelids and smiled.
He went out softly, locking the two doors, and paused at the first landing, to enter what Sergeant Harvey had called the “machinery room.” He turned over a switch and the electric ventilating apparatus hummed drowsily.
David went again into the yard, stopping only to lock the doors behind him. He had no time to lose; the engines of his car were still running, and he jumped into his seat and began to go slowly backward. As the wheels reached the narrow weighbridge, the gates opened again. They would remain open twenty seconds and would then close of themselves; and the car had hardly backed on to the road before they came together noiselessly.
Swiftly the car sped back. This time it turned northward and jolted to a standstill opposite Larry Holt’s flat.
Diana had gone home—it was queer how in a few days she had come to regard Larry’s flat as her home—before dinner. Her work was done, and there remained only the stern, grim processes of arrest to be accomplished. At any moment she expected the telephone bell to ring and to hear Larry’s voice telling her that the brothers were under lock and key.
She had a book on her lap, but she was not reading. Her nurse and chaperon was sewing in her room. Sunny was standing outside the door of the flat, which was ajar, discussing certain matters with Louie, the lift girl, in a low voice. Probably Sunny had secrets of his own, but it was certain that the discovery of a person who agreed with him in most of the things he said and most of the statements he made had fascinated this agreeable man.
Diana sat, her head bent, her hand softly caressing her throat, and her mind was on the future rather than upon the tragic past. She rose once and went into Sunny’s little room, where the woman she had called “aunt” was sleeping peacefully; and she smiled as she walked back along the passage at the thought of this female invasion of Larry’s bachelor quarters.
She had taken up the book when Sunny knocked and came in.
“There’s a note for you, miss,” he said, and handed a letter to the girl. It was in Larry’s writing, and she tore open the envelope and read:
Dear Diana:
The most extraordinary mistake has occurred. Dr. Judd has given an amazing version of the death of your father. Will you get into the car which I have sent and come down to his house at once—38 Endman Gardens, Chelsea.
Larry.
She glanced at the embossed note-heading. Larry had written from Endman Gardens.
“Is there any answer, miss?”
“Yes,” said the girl. “Tell the chauffeur I will come down at once.”
“Are you going out, miss?” said Sunny dubiously.
“Yes, I am going to Mr. Holt,” she said with a smile.
“Would you like me to come with you, miss?” said Sunny. “The master doesn’t wish you to go about alone.”
“I think I’m all right this evening, Sunny,” said the girl kindly. “Thank you very much for your offer.”
She dressed quickly and went downstairs. The limousine was waiting at the door, and the chauffeur touched his cap.
“Miss Ward?” he asked. “I’m from the doctor’s.” He spoke in a gruff voice, as if he had a cold.
“I am Miss Ward,” she replied, and sprang into the limousine.
The car stopped before a dark and silent house.
“Is this the place?” she asked.
“Yes, miss,” said the man. “If you go up those steps and ring the bell, the servant will take you to the gentlemen.”
It was Dr. Judd himself, jovial and smiling, who opened the door to her and ushered her into a magnificent room.
“You don’t mind waiting here a little while, Miss Stuart?” he said.
The name sounded oddly to her, and he laughed.
“I suppose you’re not used to being called that name, eh?” he said with excellent humour. “Now I’m going upstairs to see our mutual friend, and I will bring him down to you. Perhaps you could amuse yourself for ten minutes. Our little conference is not quite ended.”
She nodded, and settled herself in the chair. The ten minutes passed, and twenty minutes, and the twenty minutes became forty minutes, and nobody came to her. The silver-toned clock on the mantelpiece chimed sweetly.
“Ten o’clock!” she said in surprise. “I wonder what is keeping him?”
Yet she had no fear, and did not doubt for one moment that Larry was in the house.
The room was luxurious, beautiful, more beautiful than any Diana had ever seen. She sat by the side of a great open fireplace where a small fire was burning, for the night was chilly, and she looked round approvingly upon the pictures, the tapestries, the rich hangings, and the soft panelling which was the background for all. There was not an article of furniture in that room, she thought, that had not been chosen with care and judgment. The rugs upon the floor were antique Persian; the carved table might have been looted from an Eastern emperor’s palace.
She lay luxuriously in the depths of a great chair, an illustrated newspaper on her knees, and brought her gaze back to the fire and her thoughts to Larry. She wondered what important matters he was discussing and what was the explanation which the doctor had offered. After a while she looked up at the clock again. Half-past ten! She put down her paper and walked restlessly about the gorgeous apartment, and then she heard the click of a door and Dr. Judd came in from the hall.
“I hope you haven’t been lonely,” he said. “He will be in very shortly.”
She took it for granted that the “he” to whom the doctor referred was Larry Holt.
“I was getting worried,” she smiled. “What a beautiful room this is!”
“Yes,” he said carelessly, “it is beautiful, but one day we will have a more wonderful saloon to show you.”
“Here he is,” said the doctor; but it was not Larry who came in. She sprang to her feet with an exclamation of alarm. The man who had entered was John Dearborn. He made no pretence now. His glasses were gone, and his fine eyes were surveying her with amusement.
“Where is Mr. Holt?” she asked.
Dearborn laughed softly.
“You would like some supper,” he said, and slipped back one of the panels by the side of the fireplace, revealing a silver tray on which a meal for one had been laid.
“We do not eat at night.” He carried the tray to the table and spread a lace cloth.
The girl’s colour had gone. She was in mortal peril, but her voice did not quiver.
“Where is Mr. Holt?” she asked again.
“Mr. Holt is quite happy.” It was the doctor who spoke. “We will let you see him later.”
The strange words and the stranger tone frightened her, and she got up from her chair and picked up her wrap.
“I don’t think I will stay any longer, if Mr. Holt is not here, Dr. Judd,” she said, addressing that jovial man. “Can you take me home?”
The doctor did not reply. He had pulled open a drawer of a lacquer bureau and had taken out a thick pad of papers and handed them to Dearborn with a broad smile.
“You’re going to have a delightful time, Miss Stuart,” he said. “Really, David, it is most good of you. I thought you would be too tired to-night.”
The girl looked from one to the other, not daring to credit her own senses. Dr. Judd, who had hitherto been polite to a point of obsequiousness, was ignoring her.
“I don’t think you heard me, Dr. Judd,” she said steadily. “I want you to take me back to my—to Mr. Holt’s flat.”
“She is thinking of her clothes,” murmured the doctor, addressing his brother. “You will see that they are sent for, won’t you, David?”
“Sent for?” gasped the girl. “What do you mean?”
David Judd—already she had ceased to think of him as “Dearborn”—had settled himself in the chair which she had lately occupied, and was turning the leaves of his manuscript book.
“I think you had better eat first. You must be very hungry.”
“I will eat nothing in this house until I know what you mean by saying that my clothes will be brought here,” she said hotly. “I am going back alone.”
“Dear young lady,”—it was the doctor who laid his big hand on her arm—“please do not distract David. He is going to read one of his beautiful plays to you. Do you know that David is the greatest dramatist in the world—the supreme force in modern drama, rivalling, and indeed excelling, the so-called genius of Shakespeare?”
David looked at his brother and their eyes met.
He was so earnest, so self-convinced, that she had no words for a moment. Then:
“I am not in a mood to hear plays read, however beautiful they are,” she said. She had to keep a tight hold on herself, for instinct warned her that her plight was desperate.
“I don’t think she will go back to-night,” said the doctor, almost regretfully. “Perhaps to-morrow, when you are married to her?”
He spoke timidly, pleadingly, and there was a question in his statement.
“I shall not marry her,” said the man called Dearborn sharply. “I thought we had arranged that, brother? Jake is dead, but there are others. Does it matter who marries her?”
Diana was dumb with indignation and horror. They were discussing her marriage with one of them, each trying to induce the other to wed her with a calmness and an assurance which left her speechless. At last she found her voice.
“I do not intend marrying either of you,” she said. “I am engaged to—Larry Holt.”
Both men were looking at her, and in the doctor’s rubicund face there was an expression of distress.
“It is a pity,” he said. “The whole thing could be arranged if Mr. Holt were with us. Unfortunately, though he is with us in the body, we are spiritually as far as the poles apart.”
“With us in the body?” she repeated, and was seized with a violent fit of trembling. She had realized that the letter which lured her to this terrible house was a forgery, and her hope of rescue was centred on the certainty that Larry would discover her absence and come after her.