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Title: The Secret House

Author: Edgar Wallace

Release Date: August 3, 2008 [EBook #26176]

Language: English

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THE SECRET HOUSE

By EDGAR WALLACE

[Illustration: Publisher's logo]

A. L. BURT COMPANY
Publishers      New York

Printed in U. S. A.


Copyright, 1919
BY SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY
(INCORPORATED)

Second Printing, August, 1919




THE SECRET HOUSE




CHAPTER I


A man stood irresolutely before the imposing portals of Cainbury House,
a large office building let out to numerous small tenants, and
harbouring, as the indicator on the tiled wall of the vestibule
testified, some thirty different professions. The man was evidently
poor, for his clothes were shabby and his boots were down at heel. He
was as evidently a foreigner. His clean-shaven eagle face was sallow,
his eyes were dark, his eyebrows black and straight.

He passed up the few steps into the hall and stood thoughtfully before
the indicator. Presently he found what he wanted. At the very top of the
list and amongst the crowded denizens of the fifth floor was a slip
inscribed:


                       "THE GOSSIP'S CORNER"


He took from his waistcoat pocket a newspaper cutting and compared the
two then stepped briskly, almost jauntily, into the hall, as though all
his doubts and uncertainties had vanished, and waited for the elevator.
His coat was buttoned tightly, his collar was frayed, his shirt had seen
the greater part of a week's service, the Derby hat on his head had
undergone extensive renovations, and a close observer would have noticed
that his gloves were odd ones.

He walked into the lift and said, "Fifth floor," with a slight foreign
accent.

He was whirled up, the lift doors clanged open and the grimy finger of
the elevator boy indicated the office. Again the man hesitated,
examining the door carefully. The upper half was of toughened glass and
bore the simple inscription:


                        "THE GOSSIP'S CORNER.
                              KNOCK."


Obediently the stranger knocked and the door opened through an invisible
agent, much to the man's surprise, though there was nothing more magical
about the phenomenon than there is about any electrically controlled
office door.

He found himself in a room sparsely furnished with a table, a chair and
a few copies of papers. An old school map of England hung on one wall
and a Landseer engraving on the other. At the farthermost end of the
room was another door, and to this he gravitated and again, after a
moment's hesitation, he knocked.

"Come in," said a voice.

He entered cautiously.

The room was larger and was comfortably furnished. There were shaded
electric lamps on either side of the big carved oak writing-table. One
of the walls was covered with books, and the litter of proofs upon the
table suggested that this was the sanctorum.

But the most remarkable feature of the room was the man who sat at the
desk. He was a man solidly built and, by his voice, of middle age. His
face the new-comer could not see and for excellent reason. It was hidden
behind a veil of fine silk net which had been adjusted over the head
like a loose bag and tightened under the chin.

The man at the table chuckled when he saw the other's surprise.

"Sit down," he said--he spoke in French--"and don't, I beg of you, be
alarmed."

"Monsieur," said the new-comer easily, "be assured that I am not
alarmed. In this world nothing has ever alarmed me except my own
distressing poverty and the prospect of dying poor."

The veiled figure said nothing for a while.

"You have come in answer to my advertisement," he said after a long
pause.

The other bowed.

"You require an assistant, Monsieur," said the new-comer, "discreet,
with a knowledge of foreign languages and poor. I fulfill all those
requirements," he went on calmly; "had you also added, of an adventurous
disposition, with few if any scruples, it would have been equally
descriptive."

The stranger felt that the man at the desk was looking at him, though he
could not see his eyes. It must have been a long and careful scrutiny,
for presently the advertiser said gruffly:

"I think you'll do."

"Exactly," said the new-comer with cool assurance; "and now it is for
you, dear Monsieur, to satisfy me that you also will do. You will have
observed that there are two parties to every bargain. First of all, my
duties?"

The man in the chair leant back and thrust his hands into his pockets.

"I am the editor of a little paper which circulates exclusively amongst
the servants of the upper classes," he said. "I receive from time to
time interesting communications concerning the aristocracy and gentry of
this country, written by hysterical French maids and revengeful Italian
valets. I am not a good linguist, and I feel that there is much in these
epistles which I miss and which I should not miss."

The new-comer nodded.

"I therefore want somebody of discretion who will deal with my foreign
correspondence, make a fair copy in English and summarize the complaints
which these good people make. You quite understand," he said with a
shrug of his shoulders, "that mankind is not perfect, less perfect is
womankind, and least perfect is that section of mankind which employs
servants. They usually have stories to tell not greatly to their
masters' credit, not nice stories, you understand, my dear friend. By
the way, what is your name?"

The stranger hesitated.

"Poltavo," he said after a pause.

"Italian or Pole?" asked the other.

"Pole," replied Poltavo readily.

"Well, as I was saying," the editor went on, "we on this paper are very
anxious to secure news of society doings. If they are printable, we
print them; if they are not printable"--he paused--"we do not print
them. But," he raised a warning forefinger, "the fact that particulars
of disgraceful happenings are not fit for publication must not induce
you to cast such stories into the wastepaper basket. We keep a record
of such matters for our own private amusement." He said this latter
airily, but Poltavo was not deceived.

Again there was a long silence whilst the man at the table ruminated.

"Where do you live?" he asked.

"On the fourth floor of a small house in Bloomsbury," replied Poltavo.

The veiled figure nodded.

"When did you come to this country?"

"Six months ago."

"Why?"

Poltavo shrugged his shoulders.

"Why?" insisted the man at the table.

"A slight matter of disagreement between myself and the admirable chief
of police of Sans Sebastian," he said as airily as the other.

Again the figure nodded.

"If you had told me anything else, I should not have engaged you," he
said.

"Why?" asked Poltavo in surprise.

"Because you are speaking the truth," said the other coolly. "Your
matter of disagreement with the police in Sans Sebastian was over the
missing of some money in the hotel where you were staying. The room
happened to be next to yours and communicating, if one had the ingenuity
to pick the lock of the door. Also your inability to pay the hotel bill
hastened your departure."

"What an editor!" said the other admiringly, but without showing any
signs of perturbation or embarrassment.

"It is my business to know something about everybody," said the editor.
"By the way, you may call me Mr. Brown, and if at times I may seem
absent-minded when I am so addressed you must excuse me, because it is
not my name. Yes, you are the kind of man I want."

"It is remarkable that you should have found me," said Poltavo. "The
cutting"--he indicated the newspaper clip--"was sent to me by an unknown
friend."

"I was the unknown friend," said "Mr. Brown"; "do you understand the
position?"

Poltavo nodded.

"I understand everything," he said, "except the last and most important
of all matters; namely, the question of my salary."

The man named a sum--a generous sum to Poltavo, and Mr. Brown, eyeing
him keenly, was glad to note that his new assistant was neither
surprised nor impressed.

"You will see very little of me at this office," the editor went on. "If
you work well, and I can trust you, I will double the salary I am
giving you; if you fail me, you will be sorry for yourself."

He rose.

"That finishes our interview. You will come here to-morrow morning and
let yourself in. Here is the key of the door and a key to the safe in
which I keep all correspondence. You will find much to incriminate
society and precious little that will incriminate me. I expect you to
devote the whole of your attention to this business," he said slowly and
emphatically.

"You may be sure----" began Poltavo.

"Wait, I have not finished. By devoting the whole of your attention to
the business, I mean I want you to have no spare time to conduct any
investigations as to my identity. By a method which I will not trouble
to explain to you I am able to leave this building without any person
being aware of the fact that I am the editor of this interesting
publication. When you have been through your letters I want you to
translate those which contain the most important particulars and forward
them by a messenger who will call every evening at five o'clock. Your
salary will be paid regularly, and you will not be bothered with any
editorial duties. And now, if you will please go into the outer room and
wait a few moments, you may return in five minutes and begin on this
accumulation of correspondence."

Poltavo, with a little bow, obeyed, and closed the door carefully behind
him. He heard a click, and knew that the same electric control which had
opened the outer door had now closed the inner. At the end of five
minutes, as near as he could judge, he tried the door. It opened readily
and he stepped into the inner office. The room was empty. There was a
door leading out to the corridor, but something told the new assistant
that this was not the manner of egress which his employer had adopted.
He looked round carefully. There was no other door, but behind the chair
where the veiled man had sat was a large cupboard. This he opened
without, however, discovering any solution to the mystery of Mr. Brown's
disappearance, for the cupboard was filled with books and stationery. He
then began a systematic search of the apartment. He tried all the
drawers of the desk and found they were open, whereupon his interest in
their contents evaporated, since he knew a gentleman of Mr. Brown's wide
experience was hardly likely to leave important particulars concerning
himself in an unlocked desk. Poltavo shrugged his shoulders, deftly
rolling a cigarette, which he lit, then pulling the chair up to the desk
he began to attack the pile of letters which awaited his attention.


For six weeks Mr. Poltavo had worked with painstaking thoroughness in
the new service. Every Friday morning he had found on his desk an
envelope containing two bank notes neatly folded and addressed to
himself. Every evening at five o'clock a hard-faced messenger had called
and received a bulky envelope containing Poltavo's translations.

The Pole was a keen student of the little paper, which he bought every
week, and he had noted that very little of the information he had
gleaned appeared in print. Obviously then _Gossip's Corner_ served Mr.
Brown in some other way than as a vehicle for scandal, and the veil was
partly lifted on this mysterious business on an afternoon when there had
come a sharp tap at the outer door of the office. Poltavo pressed the
button on the desk, which released the lock, and presently the tap was
repeated on the inside door.

The door opened and a girl stood in the entrance hesitating.

"Won't you come in?" said Poltavo, rising.

"Are you the editor of this paper?" asked the girl, as she slowly closed
the door behind her.

Poltavo bowed. He was always ready to accept whatever honour chance
bestowed upon him. Had she asked him if he were Mr. Brown, he would also
have bowed.

"I had a letter from you," said the girl, coming to the other side of
the table and resting her hand on its edge and looking down at him a
little scornfully, and a little fearfully, as Poltavo thought.

He bowed again. He had not written letters to anybody save to his
employer, but his conscience was an elastic one.

"I write so many letters," he said airily, "that I really forget whether
I have written to you or not. May I see the letter?"

She opened her bag, took out an envelope, removed the letter and passed
it across to the interested young man. It was written on the
note-heading of _Gossip's Corner_, but the address had been scratched
out by a stroke of the pen. It ran:


"DEAR MADAM,--

"Certain very important information has come into my possession
regarding the relationships between yourself and Captain Brackly. I feel
sure you cannot know that your name is being associated with that
officer. As the daughter and heiress of the late Sir George Billk, you
may imagine that your wealth and position in society relieves you of
criticism, but I can assure you that the stories which have been sent to
me would, were they placed in the hands of your husband, lead to the
most unhappy consequences.

"In order to prevent this matter going any further, and in order to
silence the voices of your detractors, our special inquiry department is
willing to undertake the suppression of these scandal-mongers. It will
cost you £10,000, which should be paid to me in notes. If you agree, put
an advertisement in the agony column of the _Morning Mist_, and I will
arrange a meeting where the money can be paid over. On no account
address me at my office or endeavour to interview me there.

                                "Yours very truly,
                                               "J. BROWN."


Poltavo read the letter and now the function of _Gossip's Corner_ was
very clear. He refolded the letter and handed it back to the girl.

"I may not be very clever," said the visitor, "but I think I can
understand what blackmail is when I see it."

Poltavo was in a quandary, but only for a moment.

"I did not write that letter," he said suavely; "it was written without
my knowledge. When I said that I was the editor of this paper, I meant,
of course, that I was the acting editor. Mr. Brown conducts his business
quite independently of myself. I know all the circumstances," he added
hastily, since he was very anxious that the girl should not refuse him
further information in the belief that he was an inconsiderable
quantity, "and I sympathize with you most sincerely."

A little smile curled the lips of the visitor.

Poltavo was ever a judge of men and women, and he knew that this was no
yielding, timid creature to be terrified by the fear of exposure.

"The matter can be left in the hands of Captain Brackly and my husband
to settle," she said. "I am going to take the letter to my solicitors. I
shall also show it to the two men most affected."

Now the letter had been written four days earlier, as Poltavo had seen,
and he argued that if it had not been revealed to these "two men most
affected" in the first heat of the lady's anger and indignation, it
would never be shown at all.

"I think you are very wise," he said suavely. "After all, what is a
little unpleasantness of that character? Who cares about the publication
of a few letters?"

"Has he got letters?" asked the girl quickly, with a change of tone.

Poltavo bowed again.

"Will they be returned?" she asked.

Poltavo nodded, and the girl bit her lips thoughtfully.

"I see," she said.

She looked at the letter again and without another word went out.

Poltavo accompanied her to the outer door.

"It is the prettiest kind of blackmail," she said at parting, and she
spoke without heat. "I have only now to consider which will pay me
best."

The Pole closed the door behind her and walked back to his inner office,
opened the door and stood aghast, for sitting in the chair which he had
so recently vacated was the veiled man.

He was chuckling, partly at Poltavo's surprise, partly at some amusing
thought.

"Well done, Poltavo," he said; "excellently fenced."

"Did you hear?" asked the Pole, surprised in spite of himself.

"Every word," said the other. "Well, what do you think of it?"

Poltavo pulled a chair from the wall and sat down facing his chief.

"I think it is very clever," he said admiringly, "but I also think I am
not getting sufficient salary."

The veiled man nodded.

"I think you are right," he agreed, "and I will see that it is
increased. What a fool the woman was to come here!"

"Either a fool or a bad actress," said Poltavo.

"What do you mean?" asked the other quickly.

Poltavo shrugged his shoulders.

"To my mind," he said after a moment's thought, "there is no doubt that
I have witnessed a very clever comedy. An effective one, I grant,
because it has accomplished all that was intended."

"And what was intended?" asked Mr. Brown curiously.

"It was intended by you and carried out by you in order to convey to me
the exact character of your business," said Poltavo. "I judged that fact
from the following evidence." He ticked off the points one by one on his
long white fingers. "The lady's name was, according to the envelope, let
us say, Lady Cruxbury; but the lady's real name, according to some
silver initials on her bag, began with 'G.' Those initials I also noted
on the little handkerchief she took from her bag. Therefore she was not
the person to whom the letter was addressed, or if she was, the letter
was a blind. In such an important matter Lady Cruxbury would come
herself. My own view is that there is no Lady Cruxbury, that the whole
letter was concocted and was delivered to me whilst you were watching me
from some hiding place in order to test my discretion, and, as I say, to
make me wise in the ways of your admirable journal."

Mr. Brown laughed long and softly.

"You are a clever fellow, Poltavo," he said admiringly, "and you
certainly deserve your rise of salary. Now I am going to be frank with
you. I admit that the whole thing was a blind. You now know my business,
and you now know my _raison d'être_, so to speak. Are you willing to
continue?"

"At a price," said the other.

"Name it," said the veiled man quietly.

"I am a poor adventurer," began Poltavo; "my life----"

"Cut all that stuff out," said Mr. Brown roughly, "I am not going to
give you a fortune. I am going to give you the necessities of life and a
little comfort."

Poltavo walked to the window and thrusting his hands deep into his
trouser pockets stared out. Presently he turned. "The necessities of
life to me," he said, "are represented by a flat in St. James's Street,
a car, a box at the Opera----"

"You will get none of these," interrupted Mr. Brown. "Be reasonable."

Poltavo smiled.

"I am worth a fortune to you," he said, "because I have imagination.
Here, for example." He picked out a letter from a heap on the desk and
opened it. The caligraphy was typically Latin and the handwriting was
vile. "Here is a letter from an Italian," he said, "which to the gross
mind may perhaps represent wearisome business details. To a mind of my
calibre, it is clothed in rich possibilities." He leaned across the
table; his eyes lighted up with enthusiasm. "There may be an enormous
fortune in this," and he tapped the letter slowly. "Here is a man who
desires the great English newspaper, of which he has heard (though
Heaven only knows how he can have heard it), to discover the whereabouts
and the identity of a certain M. Fallock."

The veiled man started.

"Fallock," he repeated.

Poltavo nodded.

"Our friend Fallock has built a house 'of great wonder,' to quote the
letter of our correspondent. In this house are buried millions of
lira--doesn't that fire your imagination, dear colleague?"

"Built a house, did he?" repeated the other.

"Our friends tell me," Poltavo went on,--"did I tell you it was written
on behalf of two men?--that they have a clue and in fact that they know
Mr. Fallock's address, and they are sure he is engaged in a nefarious
business, but they require confirmation of their knowledge."

The man at the table was silent.

His fingers drummed nervously on the blotting pad and his head was sunk
forward as a man weighing a difficult problem.

"All child's talk," he said roughly, "these buried treasures!--I have
heard of them before. They are just two imaginative foreigners. I
suppose they want you to advance their fare?"

"That is exactly what they do ask," said Poltavo.

The man at the desk laughed uneasily behind his veil and rose.

"It's the Spanish prison trick," he said; "surely you are not deceived
by that sort of stuff?"

Poltavo shrugged his shoulders.

"Speaking as one who has also languished in a Spanish prison," he
smiled, "and who has also sent out invitations to the generous people of
England to release him from his sad position--a release which could only
be made by generous payments--I thoroughly understand the delicate
workings of that particular fraud; but we robbers of Spain, dear
colleague, do not write in our native language, we write in good, or
bad, English. We write not in vilely spelt Italian because we know that
the recipient of our letter will not take the trouble to get it
translated. No, this is no Spanish prison trick. This is genuine."

"May I see the letter?"

Poltavo handed it across the table, and the man turning his back for a
moment upon his assistant lifted his veil and read. He folded the letter
and put it in his pocket.

"I will think about it," he said gruffly.

"Another privilege I would crave from you in addition to the purely
nominal privilege of receiving more salary," said Poltavo.

"What is it?"

The Pole spread out his hands in a gesture of self-depreciation.

"It is weak of me, I admit," he said, "but I am anxious--foolishly
anxious--to return to the society of well-clothed men and pretty women.
I pine for social life. It is a weakness of mine," he added
apologetically. "I want to meet stockbrokers, financiers, politicians
and other _chevaliers d'industrie_ on equal terms, to wear the _grande
habit_, to listen to soft music, to drink good wine."

"Well?" asked the other suspiciously. "What am I to do?"

"Introduce me to society," said Poltavo sweetly--"most particularly do I
desire to meet that merchant prince of whose operations I read in the
newspapers, Mr. how-do-you-call-him?--Farrington."

The veiled man sat in silence for a good minute, and then he rose,
opened the cupboard and put in his hand. There was a click and the
cupboard with its interior swung back, revealing another room which was
in point of fact an adjoining suite of offices, also rented by Mr.
Brown. He stood silently in the opening, his chin on his breast, his
hands behind him, then:

"You are very clever, Poltavo," he said, and passed through and the
cupboard swung back in its place.




CHAPTER II


"Assassin!"

This was the cry which rang out in the stillness of the night, and
aroused the interest of one inhabitant of Brakely Square who was awake.
Mr. Gregory Farrington, a victim of insomnia, heard the sound, and put
down the book he was reading, with a frown. He rose from his easy chair,
pulled his velvet dressing gown lightly round his rotund form and
shuffled to the window. His blinds were lowered, but these were of the
ordinary type, and he stuck two fingers between two of the laths.

There was a moist film on the window through which the street lamps
showed blurred and indistinct, and he rubbed the pane clear with the
tips of his fingers (he described every action to T. B. Smith
afterwards).

Two men stood outside the house. They occupied the centre of the
deserted pavement, and they were talking excitedly. Through the closed
window Mr. Farrington could hear the staccato rattle of their voices,
and by the gesticulations, familiar to one who had lived for many years
in a Latin country, he gathered that they were of that breed.

He saw one raise his hand to strike the other and caught the flash of a
pistol-barrel excitedly flourished.

"Humph!" said Mr. Farrington.

He was alone in his beautiful house in Brakely Square. His butler, the
cook, and one sewing maid and the chauffeur were attending the servants'
ball which the Manley-Potters were giving. Louder grew the voices on the
pavement.

"Thief!" shrilled a voice in French, "Am I to be robbed of----" and the
rest was indistinguishable.

There was a policeman on point duty at the other side of the square. Mr.
Farrington's fingers rubbed the glass with greater energy, and his
anxious eyes looked left and right for the custodian of the law.

He crept down the stairs, opened the metal flap of the letter-box and
listened. It was not difficult to hear all they said, though they had
dropped their voices, for they stood at the foot of the steps.

"What is the use?" said one in French. "There is a reward large enough
for two--but for him--my faith! there is money to be made, sufficient
for twenty. It is unfortunate that we should meet on similar errands,
but I swear to you I did not desire to betray you----" The voice sank.

Mr. Farrington chewed the butt of his cigar in the darkness of the hall
and pieced together the jigsaw puzzle of this disjointed conversation.
These men must be associates of Montague--Montague Fallock, who else?

Montague Fallock, the blackmailer for whom the police of Europe were
searching, and individually and separately they had arranged to
blackmail him--or betray him.

The fact that T. B. Smith also had a house in Brakely Square, and that
T. B. Smith was an Assistant Commissioner of the police, and most
anxious to meet Montague Fallock in the flesh, might supply reason
enough to the logical Mr. Farrington for this conversation outside his
respectable door.

"Yes, I tell you," said the second man, angrily, "that I have arranged
to see M'sieur--you must trust me----"

"We go together," said the other, definitely, "I trust no man, least of
all a confounded Neapolitan----"


Constable Habit had not heard the sound of quarrelling voices, as far
as could be gathered from subsequent inquiry. His statement, now in the
possession of T. B. Smith, distinctly says, "I heard nothing unusual."

But suddenly two shots rang out.

"Clack--clack!" they went, the unmistakable sound of an automatic pistol
or pistols, then a police whistle shrieked, and P. C. Habit broke into a
run in the direction of the sound, blowing his own whistle as he ran.

He arrived to find three men, two undoubtedly dead on the ground, and
the third, Mr. Farrington's unpicturesque figure, standing shivering in
the doorway of his house, a police whistle at his lips, and his grey
velvet dressing-gown flapping in a chill eastern wind.

Ten minutes later T. B. Smith arrived on the scene from his house, to
find a crowd of respectable size, half the bedroom windows of Brakely
Square occupied by the morbid and the curious, and the police ambulance
already on the spot.

"Dead, sir," reported the constable.

T. B. looked at the men on the ground. They were obviously foreigners.
One was well, almost richly dressed; the other wore the shabby evening
dress of a waiter, under the long ulster which covered him from neck to
foot.

The men lay almost head to head. One flat on his face (he had been in
this position when the constable found him, and had been restored to
that position when the methodical P. C. Habit found that he was beyond
human assistance) and the other huddled on his side.

The police kept the crowd at a distance whilst the head of the secret
police (T. B. Smith's special department merited that description) made
a careful examination. He found a pistol on the ground, and another
under the figure of the huddled man, then as the police ambulance was
backed to the pavement, he interviewed the shivering Mr. Farrington.

"If you will come upstairs," said that chilled millionaire, "I will tell
you all I know."

T. B. sniffed the hall as he entered, but said nothing. He had his
olfactory sense developed to an abnormal degree, but he was a tactful
and a silent man.

He knew Mr. Farrington--who did not?--both as a new neighbour and as the
possessor of great wealth.

"Your daughter----" he began.

"My ward," corrected Mr. Farrington, as he switched on all the lights of
his sitting-room, "she is out--in fact she is staying the night with my
friend Lady Constance Dex--do you know her?"

T. B. nodded.

"I can only give you the most meagre information," said Mr. Farrington.
He was white and shaky, a natural state for a law-abiding man who had
witnessed wilful murder. "I heard voices and went down to the door,
thinking I would find a policeman--then I heard two shots almost
simultaneously, and opened the door and found the two men as they were
found by the policeman."

"What were they talking about?"

Mr. Farrington hesitated.

"I hope I am not going to be dragged into this case as a witness?" he
asked, rather than asserted, but received no encouragement in the spoken
hope from T. B. Smith.

"They were discussing that notorious man, Montague Fallock," said the
millionaire; "one was threatening to betray him to the police."

"Yes," said T. B. It was one of those "yesses" which signified
understanding and conviction.

Then suddenly he asked:

"Who was the third man?"

Mr. Farrington's face went from white to red, and to white again.

"The third man?" he stammered.

"I mean the man who shot those two," said T. B., "because if there is
one thing more obvious than another it is that they were both killed by
a third person. You see," he went on, "though they had pistols neither
had been discharged--that was evident, because on each the safety catch
was raised. Also the lamp-post near which they stood was chipped by a
bullet which neither could have fired. I suggest, Mr. Farrington, that
there was a third man present. Do you object to my searching your
house?"

A little smile played across the face of the other.

"I haven't the slightest objection," he said. "Where will you start?"

"In the basement," said T. B.; "that is to say, in your kitchen."

The millionaire led the way down the stairs, and descended the back
stairway which led to the domain of the absent cook. He turned on the
electric light as they entered.

There was no sign of an intruder.

"That is the cellar door," indicated Mr. Farrington, "this the larder,
and this leads to the area passage. It is locked."

T. B. tried the handle, and the door opened readily.

"This at any rate is open," he said, and entered the dark passageway.

"A mistake on the part of the butler," said the puzzled Mr. Farrington.
"I have given the strictest orders that all these doors should be
fastened. You will find the area door bolted and chained."

T. B. threw the rays of his electric torch over the door.

"It doesn't seem to be," he remarked; "in fact, the door is ajar."

Farrington gasped.

"Ajar?" he repeated. T. B. stepped out into the well of the tiny
courtyard. It was approached from the street by a flight of stone
stairs.

T. B. threw the circle of his lamp over the flagged yard. He saw
something glittering and stooped to pick it up. The object was a tiny
gold-capped bottle such as forms part of the paraphernalia in a woman's
handbag.

He lifted it to his nose and sniffed it.

"That is it," he said.

"What?" asked Mr. Farrington, suspiciously.

"The scent I detected in your hall," replied T. B. "A peculiar scent, is
it not?" He raised the bottle to his nose again. "Not your ward's by any
chance?"

Farrington shook his head vigorously.

"Doris has never been in this area in her life," he said; "besides, she
dislikes perfumes."

T. B. slipped the bottle in his pocket.

Further examination discovered no further clue as to the third person,
and T. B. followed his host back to the study.

"What do you make of it?" asked Mr. Farrington.

T. B. did not answer immediately. He walked to the window and looked
out. The little crowd which had been attracted by the shots and arrival
of the police ambulance had melted away. The mist which had threatened
all the evening had rolled into the square and the street lamps showed
yellow through the dingy haze.

"I think," he said, "that I have at last got on the track of Montague
Fallock."

Mr. Farrington looked at him with open mouth.

"You don't mean that?" he asked incredulously.

T. B. inclined his head.

"The open door below--the visitor?" jerked the stout man, "you don't
think Montague Fallock was in the house to-night?"

T. B. nodded again, and there was a moment's silence.

"He has been blackmailing me," said Mr. Farrington, thoughtfully, "but I
don't think----"

The detective turned up his coat collar preparatory to leaving.

"I have a rather unpleasant job," he said. "I shall have to search
those unfortunate men."

Mr. Farrington shivered. "Beastly," he said, huskily.

T. B. glanced round the beautiful apartment with its silver fittings,
its soft lights and costly panellings. A rich, warm fire burnt in an
oxidized steel grate. The floor was a patchwork of Persian rugs, and a
few pictures which adorned the walls must have been worth a fortune.

On the desk there was a big photograph in a plain silver frame--the
photograph of a handsome woman in the prime of life.

"Pardon me," said T. B., and crossed to the picture, "this is----"

"Lady Constance Dex," said the other, shortly--"a great friend of mine
and my ward's."

"Is she in town?"

Mr. Farrington shook his head.

"She is at Great Bradley," he said; "her brother is the rector there."

"Great Bradley?"

T. B.'s frown showed an effort to recollect something.

"Isn't that the locality which contains the Secret House?"

"I've heard something about the place," said Mr. Farrington with a
little smile.

"C. D.," said the detective, making for the door.

"What?"

"Lady Constance Dex's initials, I mean," said T. B.

"Yes--why?"

"Those are the initials on the gold scent bottle, that is all," said the
detective. "Good night."

He left Mr. Farrington biting his finger nails--a habit he fell into
when he was seriously perturbed.




CHAPTER III


T. B. Smith sat alone in his office in Scotland Yard. Outside, the
Embankment, the river, even the bulk of the Houses of Parliament were
blotted out by the dense fog. For two days London had lain under the
pall, and if the weather experts might be relied upon, yet another two
days of fog was to be expected.

The cheery room, with its polished oak panelling and the chaste elegance
of its electroliers, offered every inducement to a lover of comfort to
linger. The fire glowed bright and red in the tiled fireplace, a silver
clock on the mantelpiece ticked musically, and at his hand was a
white-covered tray with a tiny silver teapot, and the paraphernalia
necessary for preparing his meal--that strange tea-supper which was one
of T. B. Smith's eccentricities.

He glanced at the clock; the hands pointed to twenty-five minutes past
one.

He pressed a little button let into the side of the desk, and a few
seconds later there was a gentle tap at the door, and a helmetless
constable appeared.

"Go to the record room and get me"--he consulted a slip of paper on the
desk--"Number G 7941."

The man withdrew noiselessly, and T. B. Smith poured out a cup of tea
for himself.

There was a thoughtful line on his broad forehead, a look of
unaccustomed worry on the handsome face, tanned with the suns of
Southern France. He had come back from his holiday to a task which
required the genius of a superman. He had to establish the identity of
the greatest swindler of modern times, Montague Fallock. And now another
reason existed for his search. To Montague Fallock, or his agent, must
be ascribed the death of two men found in Brakely Square the night
before.

No man had seen Montague; there was no photograph to assist the army of
detectives who were seeking him. His agents had been arrested and
interrogated, but they were but the agents of agents. The man himself
was invisible. He stood behind a steel network of banks and lawyers and
anonymities, unreachable.

The constable returned, bearing under his arm a little black leather
envelope, and, depositing it on the desk of the Assistant Commissioner,
withdrew.

T. B. opened the envelope and removed three neat packages tied with red
tape. He unfastened one of these and laid three cards before him. They
were three photographic enlargements of a finger print. It did not need
the eye of an expert to see they were of the same finger, though it was
obvious that they had been made under different circumstances.

T. B. compared them with a smaller photograph he had taken from his
pocket. Yes, there was no doubt about it. The four pictures, secured by
a delicate process from the almost invisible print on the latest letter
of the blackmailer, proved beyond any doubt the identity of Lady Dex's
correspondent.

He rang the bell again and the constable appeared in the doorway.

"Is Mr. Ela in his office?"

"Yes, sir. He's been taking information about that Dock case."

"Dock case? Oh yes, I remember; two men were caught rifling the Customs
store; they shot a dock constable and got away."

"They both got away, sir," said the man, "but one was shot by the
constable's mate; they found his blood on the pavement outside where
their motor-car was waiting."

T. B. nodded.

"Ask Mr. Ela to come in when he is through," he said.

Mr. Ela was evidently "through," for almost immediately after the
message had gone, the long, melancholy face of the superintendent
appeared in the doorway.

"Come in, Ela," smiled T. B.; "tell me all your troubles."

"My main trouble," replied Ela, as he sank wearily into the padded
chair, "is to induce eyewitnesses to agree as to details; there is
absolutely no clue as to the identity of the robbers, and nearly
murderers. The number of the car was a spurious one, and was not traced
beyond Limehouse. I am up against a blank wall. The only fact I have to
go upon is the very certain fact that one of the robbers was either
wounded or killed and carried to the car by his friend, and that his
body will have to turn up somewhere or other--then we may have something
to go on."

"If it should prove to be that of my friend Montague Fallock," said T.
B. humorously, "I shall be greatly relieved. What were your thieves
after--bullion?"

"Hardly! No, they seem to be fairly prosaic pilferers. They engaged in
going through a few trunks--part of the personal baggage of the
_Mandavia_ which arrived from Coast ports on the day previous. The
baggage was just heavy truck; the sort of thing that a passenger leaves
in the docks for a day or two till he has arranged for their carriage.
The trunks disturbed, included one of the First Secretary to a High
Commissioner in Congoland, a dress basket of a Mrs. Somebody-or-other
whose name I forget--she is the wife of a Commissioner--and a small box
belonging to Dr. Goldworthy, who has just come back from the Congo where
he has been investigating sleeping sickness."

"Doesn't sound thrilling," said T. B. thoughtfully; "but why do swagger
criminals come in their motor-cars with their pistols and masks--they
were masked if I remember the printed account aright?" Ela nodded. "Why
do they come on so prosaic an errand?"

"Tell me," said Ela, laconically, then, "What is your trouble?"

"Montague," said the other, with a grim smile, "Montague Fallock,
Esquire. He has been demanding a modest ten thousand pounds from Lady
Constance Dex--Lady Constance being a sister of the Hon. and Rev. Harry
Dex, Vicar of Great Bradley. The usual threat--exposure of an old love
affair.

"Dex is a large, bland aristocrat under the thumb of his sister; the
lady, a masterful woman, still beautiful; the indiscretion partly atoned
by the death of the man. He died in Africa. Those are the circumstances
that count. The brother knows, but our friend Montague will have it that
the world should know. He threatens to murder, if necessary, should she
betray his demands to the police. This is not the first time he has
uttered this threat. Farrington, the millionaire, was the last man, and
curiously, a friend of Lady Dex."

"It's weird--the whole business," mused Ela. "The two men you found in
the square didn't help you?"

T. B., pacing the apartment with his hand in his pocket, shook his head.

"Ferreira de Coasta was one, and Henri Sans the other. Both men
undoubtedly in the employ of Montague, at some time or other. The former
was a well-educated man, who may have acted as intermediary. He was an
architect who recently got into trouble in Paris over money matters.
Sans was a courier agent, a more or less trusted messenger. There was
nothing on either body to lead me to Montague Fallock, save this."

He pulled open the drawer of his desk and produced a small silver
locket. It was engraved in the ornate style of cheap jewellery and bore
a half-obliterated monogram.

He pried open the leaf of the locket with his thumbnail. There was
nothing in its interior save a small white disc.

"A little gummed label," explained T. B., "but the inscription is
interesting."

Ela held the locket to the light, and read:


                             "Mor: Cot.
                         God sav the Keng."


"Immensely patriotic, but unintelligible and illiterate," said T. B.,
slipping the medallion into his pocket, and locking away the dossier in
one of the drawers of his desk.

Ela yawned.

"I'm sorry--I'm rather sleepy. By the way, isn't Great Bradley, about
which you were speaking, the home of a romance?"

T. B. nodded with a twinkle in his eye.

"It is the town which shelters the Secret House," he said, as he rose,
"but the eccentricities of lovesick Americans, who build houses equally
eccentric, are not matters for police investigation. You can share my
car on a fog-breaking expedition as far as Chelsea," he added, as he
slipped into his overcoat and pulled on his gloves; "we may have the
luck to run over Montague."

"You are in the mood for miracles," said Ela, as they were descending
the stairs.

"I am in the mood for bed," replied T. B. truthfully. Outside the fog
was so thick that the two men hesitated. T. B.'s chauffeur was a wise
and patient constable, but felt in his wisdom that patience would be
wasted on an attempt to reach Chelsea.

"It's thick all along the road, sir," he said. "I've just 'phoned
through to Westminster Police Station, and they say it is madness to
attempt to take a car through the fog."

T. B. nodded.

"I'll sleep here," he said. "You'd better bed down somewhere, David, and
you, Ela?"

"I'll take a little walk in the park," said the sarcastic Mr. Ela.

T. B. went back to his room, Ela following.

He switched on the light, but stood still in the doorway. In the ten
minutes' absence some one had been there. Two drawers of the desk had
been forced; the floor was littered with papers flung there hurriedly by
the searcher.

T. B. stepped swiftly to the desk--the envelope had gone.

A window was open and the fog was swirling into the room.

"There's blood here," said Mr. Ela. He pointed to the dappled blotting
pad.

"Cut his hand on the glass," said T. B. and jerked his head to the
broken pane in the window. He peered out through the open casement. A
hook ladder, such as American firemen use, was hanging to the parapet.
So thick was the fog that it was impossible to see how long the ladder
was, but the two men pulled it up with scarcely an effort. It was made
of a stout light wood, with short steel brackets affixed at intervals.

"Blood on this too," said Ela, then, to the constable who had come to
his ring, he jerked his orders rapidly: "Inspector on duty to surround
the office with all the reserve--'phone Cannon Row all men available to
circle Scotland Yard, and to take into custody a man with a cut
hand--'phone all stations to that effect."

"There's little chance of getting our friend," said T. B. He took up a
magnifying glass and examined the stains on the pad.

"Who was he?" asked Ela.

T. B. pointed to the stain.

"Montague," he said, briefly, "and he now knows the very thing I did not
wish him to know."

"And that is?"

T. B. did not speak for a moment. He stood looking down at the evidence
which the intruder had left behind.

"He knows how much I know," he said, grimly, "but he may also imagine I
know more--there are going to be developments."




CHAPTER IV


It was a bad night in London, not wild or turbulent, but swathed to the
eyes like an Eastern woman in a soft grey garment of fog. It engulfed
the walled canyons of the city, through which the traffic had roared all
day, plugged up the maze of dark side-streets, and blotted out the open
squares. Close to the ground it was thick, viscous, impenetrable, so
that one could not see a yard ahead, and walked ghostlike, adventuring
into a strange world.

Occasionally it dispersed. In front of the Jollity Theatre numbers of
arc-lights wrought a wavering mist-hung yellow space, into which a
constant line of vehicles, like monstrous shiny beetles, emerged from
the outer nowhere, disgorged their contents, and were eclipsed again.
And pedestrians in gay processional streamed across the rudy glistening
patch like figures on a slide.

Conspicuous in the shifting throng was a sharp-faced boy, ostensibly
selling newspapers, but with a keen eye upon the arriving vehicles.
Suddenly he darted to the curb, where an electric coupe had just drawn
up. A man alighted heavily, and turned to assist a young woman.

For an instant the lad's attention was deflected by the radiant vision.
The girl, wrapped in a voluminous cloak of ivory colour, was tall and
slim, with soft white throat and graceful neck; her eyes under shadowy
lashes were a little narrow, but blue as autumn mist, and sparkling now
with amusement.

"Watch your steps, auntie," she warned laughingly, as a plump, elderly,
little lady stepped stiffly from the coupe. "These London fogs are
dangerous."

The boy stood staring at her, his feet as helpless as if they had taken
root to the ground. Suddenly he remembered his mission. His native
impudence reasserted itself, and he started forward.

"Paper, sir?"

He addressed the man. For a moment it seemed as though he were to be
rebuffed, then something in the boy's attitude changed his mind.

As the man fumbled in an inner pocket for change, the lad took a swift
inventory. The face beneath the tall hat was a powerful oval,
paste-coloured, with thin lips, and heavy lines from nostril to jaw.
The eyes were close set and of a turbid grey.

"It's him," the boy assured himself, and opened his mouth to speak.

The girl laughed amusedly at the spectacle of her companion's passion
for news in this grimy atmosphere, and turned to the young man in
evening dress who had just dismissed his taxi and joined the group.

It was the diversion the boy had prayed for. He took a quick step toward
the older man.

"T. B. S.," he said, in a soft but distinct undertone.

The man's face blanched suddenly, and a coin which he held in his large,
white-gloved palm slipped jingling to the pavement.

The young messenger stooped and caught it dexterously.

"T. B. S.," he whispered again, insistently.

"Here?" the answer came hoarsely. The man's lips trembled.

"Watchin' this theatre--splits[1] by the million," finished the boy
promptly, and with satisfaction. Under cover of returning the coin, he
thrust a slip of white paper into the other's hand.

[Footnote 1: Splits: detectives.]

Then he wheeled, ducked to the girl with a gay little swagger of
impudence, threw a lightning glance of scrutiny at her young escort, and
turning, was lost in the throng.

The whole incident occupied less than a minute, and presently the four
were seated in their box, and the gay strains from the overture of _The
Strand Girl_ came floating up to them.

"I wish I were a little street gamin in London," said the girl
pensively, fingering the violets at her corsage. "Think of the
adventures! Don't you, Frank?"

Frank Doughton looked across at her with smiling significant eyes, which
brought a flush to her cheeks.

"No," he said softly, "I do not!"

The girl laughed at him and shrugged her round white shoulders.

"For a young journalist, Frank, you are too obvious--too delightfully
verdant. You should study indirection, subtlety, finesse--study our
mutual friend Count Poltavo!"

She meant it mischievously, and produced the effect she desired.

At the name the young man's brow darkened.

"He isn't coming here to-night?" Doughton asked, in aggrieved tones.

The girl nodded, her eyes dancing with laughter.

"What can you see in that man, Doris?" he protested. "I'll bet you
anything you like that the fellow's a rogue! A smooth, soft-smiling
rascal! Lady Dinsmore," he appealed to the elder woman, "do you like
him?"

"Oh, don't ask Aunt Patricia!" cried the girl. "She thinks him quite the
most fascinating man in London. Don't deny it, auntie!"

"I shan't," said the lady, calmly, "for it's true! Count Poltavo"--she
paused, to inspect through her lorgnette some new-comers in the opposite
box, where she got just a glimpse of a grey dress in the misty depths of
the box, the whiteness of a gloved hand lying upon the box's
edge--"Count Poltavo is the only interesting man in London. He is a
genius." She shut her lorgnette with a snap. "It delights me to talk
with him. He smiles and murmurs gay witticisms and quotes Talleyrand and
Lucullus, and all the while, in the back of his head, quite out of
reach, his real opinions of you are being tabulated and ranged neatly in
a row like bottles on a shelf."

Doris nodded thoughtfully.

"I'd like to take down some of those bottles," she said. "Some day
perhaps I shall."

"They're probably labelled poison," remarked Frank viciously. He looked
at the girl with a growing sense of injury. Of late she had seemed
absolutely changed towards him; and from being his good friend, with
established intimacies, she had turned before his very eyes into an
alien, almost an enemy, more beautiful than ever, to be true, but
perverse, mocking, impish. She flouted him for his youth, his bluntness,
his guileless transparency. But hardest of all to bear was the delicate
derision with which she treated his awkward attempts to express his
passion for her, to speak of the fever which had taken possession of
him, almost against his will. And now, he reflected bitterly, with this
velvet fop of a count looming up as a possible rival, with his _savoir
faire_, and his absurd penchant for literature and art, what chance had
he, a plain Briton, against such odds?--unless, as he profoundly
believed, the chap was a crook. He determined to sound her guardian.

"Mr. Farrington," he asked aloud, "what do _you_ think--hallo!" He
sprang up suddenly and thrust out a supporting arm.

Farrington had risen, and stood swaying slightly upon his feet. He was
frightfully pale, and his countenance was contracted as if in pain. He
lifted a wavering hand to his head.

With a supreme effort he steadied himself.

"Doris," he asked quickly, "I meant to ask you--where did you leave Lady
Constance?"

The girl looked up in surprise.

"I haven't seen her to-day--she went down to Great Bradley last
night--didn't she, auntie?"

The elder woman nodded.

"Mannish, and not a little discourteous _I_ think," she said, "leaving
her guests and motoring through the fog to the country. I sometimes
think Constance Dex is a trifle mad."

"I wish I could share your views," said Farrington, grimly.

He turned abruptly to Doughton.

"Look after Doris," he said. "I have remembered--an engagement."

He beckoned Frank, with a scarcely perceptible gesture, and the two men
passed out of the box.

"Have you discovered anything?" he asked, when they were outside.

"About what?" asked Frank, innocently.

A grim smile broke the tense lines of Mr. Farrington's face.

"Really!" he said, drily, "for a young man engaged in most important
investigations you are casual."

"Oh!--the Tollington business," said the other. "No, Mr. Farrington, I
have found nothing. I don't think it is my game really--investigating
and discovering people. I'm a pretty good short story writer but a
pretty rotten detective. Of course, it is awfully kind of you to have
given me the job----"

"Don't talk nonsense," snapped the older man. "It isn't kindness--it's
self-interest. Somewhere in this country is the heir to the Tollington
millions. I am one of the trustees to that estate and I am naturally
keen on discovering the man who will relieve me of my responsibility.
There is a hundred pounds awaiting the individual who unearths this
heir."

He glanced at his watch.

"There is one other thing I want to speak to you about--and that is
Doris."

They stood in the little corridor which ran at the back of the boxes,
and Frank wondered why he had chosen this moment to discuss such urgent
and intimate matters. He was grateful enough to the millionaire for the
commission he had given him--though with the information to go upon,
looking for the missing Tollington heir was analogous to seeking the
proverbial needle--but grateful for the opportunity which even this
association gave him for meeting Doris Gray, he was quite content to
continue the search indefinitely.

"You know my views," the other went on--he glanced at his watch again.
"I want Doris to marry you. She is a dear girl, the only human being in
the world for whom I have any affection." His voice trembled, and none
could doubt his sincerity. "Somehow I am getting nervous about
things--that shooting which I witnessed the other night has made me
jumpy--go in and win."

He offered a cold hand to the other, and Frank took it, then, with a
little jerk of his head, and a muttered "shan't be gone long," he passed
into the vestibule, and out into the foggy street. A shrill whistle
brought a taxi from the gloom.

"The Savoy," said Farrington. He sprang in, and the cab started with a
jerk.

A minute later he thrust his head from the window.

"You may drop me here," he called. He descended and paid his fare. "I'll
walk the rest of the way," he remarked casually.

"Bit thickish on foot to-night, sir," offered the driver respectfully.
"Better let me set you down at the hotel." But his fare was already lost
in the enveloping mist.

Farrington wrapped his muffler closely about his chin, pulled down his
hat to shadow his eyes, and hurried along like a man with a set
destination.

Presently he halted and signalled to another cab, crawling along close
to the curb.




CHAPTER V


The fog was still heavy, and the blurred street-lamps looked ghastly in
the yellow mist, when the little newsboy messenger, the first half of
his mission performed, struck briskly riverward to complete his
business. He disposed of his papers by the simple expedient of throwing
them into a street refuse-bin. He jumped on a passing 'bus, and after
half an hour's cautious drive reached Southwark. He entered one of the
narrow streets leading from the Borough. Here the gas lamps were fewer,
and the intersecting streets more narrow and gloomy.

He plunged down a dark and crabbed way, glancing warily behind him now
and then to see if he was being followed.

Here, between invisible walls, the fog hung thick and warm and sticky,
crowding up close, with a kind of blowsy intimacy that whispered the
atmosphere of the place. Occasionally, close to his ear, snatches of
loose song burst out, or a coarse face loomed head-high through the
reek.

But the boy was upon his native heath and scuttled along, whistling
softly between closed teeth, as, with a dexterity born of long practice,
he skirted slush and garbage sinks, slipped around the blacker gulfs
that denoted unguarded basement holes, and eluded the hideous shadows
that lurched by in the gloom.

Hugging the wall, he presently became aware of footsteps behind him. He
rounded a corner, and, turning swiftly, collided with something which
grabbed him with great hands. Without hesitation, the lad leaned down
and set his teeth deep into the hairy arm.

The man let go with a hoarse bellow of rage and the boy, darting across
the alley, could hear him stumbling after him in blind search of the
narrow way.

As he sped along a door suddenly opened in the blank wall beside him,
and a stream of ruddy light gushed out, catching him square within its
radiance, mud-spattered, starry-eyed, vivid.

A man stood framed in the doorway.

"Come in," he commanded, briefly.

The boy obeyed. Surreptitiously he wiped the wet and mud from his face
and tried to reduce his wild breathing.

The room which he entered was meagre and stale-smelling, with bare floor
and stained and sagging wall-paper; unfurnished save for a battered deal
table and some chairs.

He sank into one of them and stared with frank curiosity past his
employer, who had often entrusted him with messages requiring secrecy,
past his employer's companion, to the third figure in the room--a
prostrate figure which lay quite still under the heavy folds of a long
dark ulster with its face turned to the wall.

"Well?" It was a singularly agreeable voice which aroused him, soft and
well-bred, but with a faint foreign accent. The speaker was his
employer, a slender dark man, with a finely carved face, immobile as the
Sphinx. He had laid aside his Inverness and top hat, and showed himself
in evening dress with a large--perhaps a thought too large--buttonhole
of Parma violets, which sent forth a faint fragrance.

Of the personality of the man the messenger knew nothing more than that
he was foreign, eccentric in a quiet way, lived in a grand house near
Portland Place, and rewarded him handsomely for his occasional services.
That the grand house was an hotel at which Poltavo had run up an
uncomfortable bill he could not know.

The boy related his adventures of the evening, not omitting to mention
his late pursuer.

The man listened quietly, brooding, his elbows upon the table, his
inscrutable face propped in the crotch of his hand. A ruby, set quaintly
in a cobra's head, gleamed from a ring upon his little finger. Presently
he roused.

"That's all to-night, my boy," he said, gravely.

He drew out his purse, extracted a sovereign, and laid it in the
messenger's hand.

"And this," he said, softly, holding up a second gold piece, "is
for--discretion! You comprehend?"

The boy shot a swift glance, not unmixed with terror, at the still,
recumbent figure in the corner, mumbled an assent and withdrew. Out in
the dampness of the fog, he took a long, deep breath.

As the door closed behind him, the door of an inner room opened and
Farrington came out. He had preceded the messenger by five minutes. The
young exquisite leaned back in his chair, and smiled into the sombre
eyes of his companion.

"At last!" he breathed, softly. "The thing moves. The wheels are
beginning to revolve!"

The other nodded gloomily, his glance straying off toward the corner of
the room.

"They've got to revolve a mighty lot more before the night's done!" he
replied, with heavy significance.

"I needn't tell you," he continued, "that we must move in this venture
with extreme caution. A single misstep at the outset, the slightest
breath of suspicion, and pff! the entire superstructure falls to the
ground."

"That is doubtless true, Mr. Farrington," murmured his companion,
pleasantly. He leaned down to inhale the fragrant scent of the violets.
"But you forget one little thing. This grand superstructure you speak
of--so mysteriously"--he hid a slight smile--"I don't know it--all. You
have seen fit, in your extreme caution, to withhold complete information
from me."

He paused, and regarded his companion with a level, steady gaze. A
faint, ironical smile played about the corners of his mouth; he spoke
with a slightly foreign accent, which was at once pleasant and piquant.

"Is it not so, my friend?" he asked, softly. "I am--how you say--left
out in the cold--I do not even know your immediate plans."

His countenance was serene and unruffled, and it was only by his
slightly quickened breathing that the conversation held any unusual
significance.

The other stirred uneasily in his chair.

"There are certain financial matters," he said, with a light air.

"There are others immediately pressing," interrupted his companion. "I
observe, for example, that your right hand is covered by a glove which
is much larger than that on your left. I imagine that beneath the white
kid there is a thin silk bandage. Really, for a millionaire, Mr.
Farrington, you are singularly--shall I say--'furtive'?"

"Hush!" whispered Farrington, hoarsely. He glanced about half-fearfully.

The younger man ignored the outburst. He laid a persuasive hand upon his
companion's arm.

"My friend," he said gravely, "let me give you a bit of good advice.
Believe me, I speak disinterestedly. Take me into your counsel. I think
you need assistance--and I have already given you a taste of my quality
in that respect. This afternoon when I called upon you in your home in
Brakely Square, suggesting that a man of my standing might be of immense
value to you, you were at first innocently dull, then suspicious. After
I told you of my adventures in the office of a certain Society journal
you were angry. Frankly," the young man shrugged his shoulders, "I am a
penniless adventurer--can I be more frank than that? I call myself
Count Poltavo--yet the good God knows that my family can give no greater
justification to the claim of nobility than the indiscretions of lovely
Lydia Poltavo, my grandmother, can offer. For the matter of that I might
as well be prince on the balance of probability. I am living by my wits:
I have cheated at cards, I have hardly stopped short of murder--I need
the patronage of a strong wealthy man, and you fulfill all my
requirements."

He bowed slightly to the other, and went on:

"You challenged me to prove my worth--I accepted that challenge.
To-night, as you entered the theatre, you were told by a messenger that
T. B. Smith--a most admirable man--was watching you--that he had
practically surrounded the Jollity with detectives, and, moreover, I
chose as my messenger a small youth who has served you more than once.
Thus at one stroke I proved that not only did I know what steps
authority was taking to your undoing, but also that I had surprised this
splendid rendezvous--and your secret."

He waived his hand around the sordid room, and his eyes rested awhile
upon the silent, ulster-covered figure on the bed; his action was not
without intent.

"You are an interesting man," said Farrington, gruffly. He looked at his
watch. "Join my party at the Jollity," he said; "we can talk matters
over. Incidentally, we may challenge Mr. Smith." He smiled, but grew
grave again. "I have lost a good friend there"--he looked at the form on
the bed; "there is no reason why you should not take his place. Is it
true--what you said to-day--that you know something of applied
mechanics?"

"I have a diploma issued by the College of Padua," said the other
promptly.




CHAPTER VI


At precisely ten o'clock, as the curtain came reefing slowly down upon
the first act of _The Strand Girl_, Lady Dinsmore turned with
outstretched hand to greet the first of the two men who had just entered
the box.

"My dear Count," she exclaimed, "I am disappointed in you! Here I have
been paying you really quite tremendous compliments to these young
people. I presume you are on Gregory's 'business'?"

"I am desolated!"

Count Poltavo had a way of looking at one gravely, with an air of
concentrated attention, as if he were seeing through the words, into the
very soul of the speaker. He was, indeed, a wonderful listener, and this
quality, added to a certain buoyancy of temperament, accounted perhaps
for his popularity in such society as he had been able to penetrate.

"Before I ask you to name the crime, Lady Dinsmore," he said, "permit
me to offer my humblest apologies for my lateness."

Lady Dinsmore shook her head at him and glanced at Farrington, but that
dour man had drawn a chair to the edge of the box, and was staring
moodily down into the great auditorium.

"You are an incorrigible!" she declared, "but sit down and make your
excuses at your leisure. You know my niece, and I think you have met Mr.
Doughton. He is one of our future leaders of thought!"

The Count bowed, and sank into a chair beside his hostess.

Frank, after a frigidly polite acknowledgement, resumed his conversation
with Doris, and Lady Dinsmore turned to her companion.

"Now for the explanation," she exclaimed, briskly. "I shall not let you
off! Unpunctuality _is_ a crime, and your punishment shall be to confess
its cause."

Count Poltavo bent toward her with bright, smiling eyes.

"A very stupid and foolish business engagement," he replied, "which
required my personal attendance, and unfortunately that of Mr.
Farrington."

Lady Dinsmore threw up a protesting hand.

"Business has no charms to soothe my savage breast! Mr. Farrington,"
she lowered her voice confidentially, "can talk of nothing else. When he
was staying with us he was for ever telegraphing, cabling to America, or
decoding messages. There was no peace in the house, by day or by night.
Finally I made a stand. 'Gregory,' I said, 'you shall not pervert my
servants with your odious tips, and turn my home into a public
stock-exchange. Take your bulls and bears over to the Savoy and play
with them there, and leave Doris to me.' And he did!" she concluded
triumphantly.

Count Poltavo looked about, as if noting for the first time Farrington's
preoccupation. "Is he quite well?" he inquired, in an undertone.

Lady Dinsmore shrugged her shoulders.

"Frankly, I think he had a slight indisposition, and magnified it in
order to escape small talk. He hates music. Doris has been quite
distrait ever since. The child adores her uncle--you know, of course,
that she is his niece--the daughter of my sister. Gregory was her
father's brother--we are almost related."

Her companion glanced across to the subject of their remarks. The girl
sat in the front of the box, slim and elegant, her hands clasped loosely
in her lap. She was watching the brilliant scene with a certain air of
detachment, as if thinking of other things. Her usual lightness and gay
banter seemed for the moment to have deserted her, leaving a soft
brooding wistfulness that was strangely appealing.

The Count looked at her.

"She is very beautiful," he murmured under his breath.

Something in his voice caught Lady Dinsmore's attention. She eyed him
keenly.

The Count met her look frankly.

"Is--is she engaged to her young friend?" he asked quietly. "Believe me,
it is not vulgar curiosity which prompts the question. I--I
am--interested." His voice was as composed as ever.

Lady Dinsmore averted her gaze hurriedly and thought with lightning
rapidity.

"I have not her confidence," she replied at length, in a low tone; "she
is a wise young woman and keeps her own counsel." She appeared to
hesitate. "She dislikes you," she said. "I am sorry to wound you, but it
is no secret."

Count Poltavo nodded. "I know," he said, simply. "Will you be my good
friend and tell me why?"

Lady Dinsmore smiled. "I will do better than that," she said kindly. "I
will be your very good friend and give you a chance to ask her why.
Frank,"--she bent forward and tapped the young man upon the shoulder
with her fan,--"will you come over here and tell me what your editor
means?"

The Count resigned his seat courteously, and took the vacant place
beside the girl. A silence fell between them, which presently the man
broke.

"Miss Gray," he began, seriously, "your aunt kindly gave me this
opportunity to ask you a question. Have I your permission also?"

The girl arched her eyebrows. Her lip curled ever so slightly.

"A question to which you and my Aunt Patricia could find no answer
between you! It must be subtle indeed! How can I hope to succeed?"

He ignored her sarcasm. "Because it concerns yourself."

"Ah!" She drew herself up and regarded him with sparkling eyes. One
small foot began to tap the floor ominously. Then she broke into a vexed
little laugh.

"I am no match for you with the foils, Count. I admit it freely. I
should have learned by this time that you never say what you mean, or
mean what you say."

"Forgive me, Miss Gray, if I say that you mistake me utterly. I mean
always what I say--most of all to you. But to say all that I mean--to
put into speech all that one hopes or dreams--or dares,"--his voice
dropped to a whisper--"to turn oneself inside out like an empty pocket
to the gaze of the multitude--that is--imbecile." He threw out his hands
with an expressive gesture.

"But to speak concretely--I have unhappily offended you, Miss Gray.
Something I have done, or left undone--or my unfortunate personality
does not engage your interest. Is it not true?"

There was no mistaking his sincerity now.

But the girl still held aloof, her blue eyes cool and watchful. For the
moment, her face, in its young hardness, bore a curious resemblance to
her uncle's.

"Is that your question?" she demanded.

The Count bowed silently.

"Then I will tell you!" She spoke in a low voice surcharged with
emotion. "I will give you candour for candour, and make an end of all
this make-believe."

"That," he murmured, "is what I most desire."

Doris continued, heedless of the interruption. "It is true that I
dislike you. I am glad to be able to tell you as much openly. And yet,
perhaps, I should use another word. I dislike your secrecy--something
dark and hidden within you--and I fear your influence over my uncle. You
have known me less than a fortnight--Mr. Farrington, less than a
week--yet you have made what I can only conceive to be impertinent
proposals of marriage to me. To-day you were for three hours with my
uncle. I can only guess what your business has been."

"You would probably guess wrong," he said coolly.

Farrington, at the other end of the box, shot a swift, suspicious glance
across. Poltavo turned to the girl again.

"I want only to be a friend of yours in the day of your need," he said,
in a low voice; "believe me, that day is not far distant."

"That is true?" She leaned toward him, a little troubled.

He bowed his head in assent.

"If I could believe you," she faltered. "I need a friend! Oh, if you
could know how I have been torn by doubts--beset by fears--oppressions."
Her voice quivered. "There is something wrong somewhere--I can't tell
you everything--if you would help me--wait. May I test you with a
question?"

"A thousand if you like."

"And you will answer--truthfully?" In her eagerness she was like a
child.

He smiled. "If I answer at all, be sure it will be truthful."

"Tell me then, is Dr. Fall your friend?"

"He is my dearest enemy," he returned, promptly.

He had only the dimmest notion as to the identity of Dr. Fall, but it
seemed that a lie was demanded--Poltavo could lie very easily.

"Or Mr. Gorth?" she asked, and he shook his head.

She drew a deep breath of relief. "And my uncle?" The question was a
whisper. She appeared to hang upon his reply.

The Count hesitated. "I do not know," he admitted finally. "If he were
not influenced by Dr. Fall, I believe he would be my friend." It was a
bow at a venture. He was following the bent of her inclination.

For the first time that evening Doris looked at him with interest.

"May I ask how your uncle came to know Gorth?"

He asked the question with the assurance of one who knew all that was to
be known save on this point.

She hesitated awhile.

"I don't quite know. The doctor we have always known. He lives in the
country, and we only see him occasionally. He is----" She hesitated and
then went on rapidly: "I think he has rather dreadful work. He is in
charge of a lunatic."

Poltavo was interested.

"Please go on," he said.

The girl smiled. "I am afraid you are an awful gossip," she rallied, but
became more serious. "I don't like him very much, but uncle says that is
my prejudice. He is one of those quiet, sure men who say very little and
make one feel rather foolish. Don't you know that feeling? It is as
though one were dancing the tango in front of the Sphinx."

Poltavo showed his white teeth in a smile.

"I have yet to have that experience," he said.

She nodded.

"One of these days you will meet Dr. Fall and you will know how helpless
one can feel in his presence."

A remarkable prophecy which was recalled by Poltavo at a moment when he
was powerless to profit by the warning.

"Mr. Gorth?"

Again she hesitated and shrugged her shoulders.

"Well," she said frankly, "he is just a common man. He looks almost
like a criminal to my mind. But apparently he has been a loyal servant
to uncle for many years."

"Tell me," asked Poltavo, "on what terms is Dr. Fall with your uncle? On
terms of equality?"

She nodded.

"Naturally," she said with a look of surprise, "he is a gentleman, and
is, I believe, fairly well off."

"And Gorth?" asked Poltavo.

He was interested for many reasons as one who had to take the place of
that silent figure which lay in the fog-shrouded house.

"I hardly know how to describe uncle's relations with Gorth," she
answered, a little puzzled. "There was a time when they were on terms of
perfect equality, but sometimes uncle would be very angry with him
indeed. He was rather a horrid man really. Do you know a paper called
_Gossip's Corner_?" she asked suddenly.

Poltavo had heard of the journal and had found a certain malicious joy
in reading its scandalous paragraphs.

"Well," she said in answer to his nod, "that was Mr. Gorth's idea of
literature. Uncle would never have the paper in his house, but whenever
you saw Mr. Gorth--he invariably waited for uncle in the kitchen--you
would be sure to find him chuckling over some of the horrid things which
that paper published. Uncle used to get more angry about this than
anything else, Mr. Gorth took a delight in all the unpleasant things
which this wretched little paper printed. I have heard it said that he
had something to do with its publication; but when I spoke to uncle
about it, he was rather cross with me for thinking such a thing."

Poltavo was conscious that the eyes of Farrington were searching his
face narrowly, and out of the corner of his eye he noted the obvious
disapproval. He turned round carelessly.

"An admirable sight--a London theatre crowd."

"Very," said the millionaire, drily.

"Celebrities on every hand--Montague Fallock, for instance, is here."

Farrington nodded.

"And that wise-looking young man in the very end seat of the fourth
row--he is in the shadow, but you may see him."

"T. B. Smith," said Farrington, shortly. "I have seen him--I have seen
everybody but----"

"But----?"

"The occupant of the royal box. She keeps in the shadow all the time.
She is not a detective, too, I suppose?" he asked, sarcastically. He
looked round. Frank Doughton, his niece and Lady Dinsmore were engrossed
in conversation.

"Poltavo," he said, dropping his voice, "I want to know who that woman
is in the opposite box--I have a reason."

The orchestra was playing a soft intermezzo, and of a sudden the lights
went down in the house, hushed to silence as the curtain went slowly up
upon the second act.

There was a shifting of chairs to distribute the view, a tense moment of
silence as the chorus came down a rocky defile and then--a white pencil
of flame shot out from the royal box and a sharp crash of a pistol
report.

"My God!" gasped Mr. Farrington, and staggered back.

There was a loud babble of voices, a stentorian voice from the back of
the stalls shouted, "House lights--quick!" The curtain fell as the house
was bathed in the sudden glare of lights.

T. B. saw the flash and leapt for the side aisle: two steps and he was
at the door which led to the royal box. It was empty. He passed quickly
through the retiring room--empty also, but the private entrance giving
on to the street was open and the fog was drifting through in great
wreaths.

He stepped out into the street and blew a shrill whistle. Instantly
from the gloom came a plain clothes policeman--No, he had seen nobody
pass. T. B. went back to the theatre, raced round to the box opposite
and found it in confusion.

"Where is Mr. Farrington?" he asked, quickly.

He addressed his remark to Poltavo.

"He is gone," said the other, with a shrug.

"He was here when the pistol was fired--at this box, my friend, as the
bullet will testify." He pointed to the mark on the enamelled panel
behind. "When the lights came he had gone--that is all."

"He can't have gone," said T. B. shortly. "The theatre is surrounded. I
have a warrant for his arrest."

A cry from the girl stopped him. She was white and shaking.

"Arrest!" she gasped, "on what charge?"

"On a charge of being concerned with one Gorth in burglary at the
Docks--and with an attempted murder."

"Gorth!" cried the girl, vehemently. "If any man is guilty, it is
Gorth--that evil man----"

"Speak softly of the dead," said T. B. gently. "Mr. Gorth, as I have
every reason to believe, received wounds from which he died. Perhaps you
can enlighten me, Poltavo?"

But the Count could only spread deprecating hands.

T. B. went out into the corridor. There was an emergency exit to the
street, but the door was closed. On the floor he found a glove, on the
door itself the print of a bloody hand.

But there was no sign of Farrington.




CHAPTER VII


Two days later, at the stroke of ten, Frank Doughton sprang from his
taxi in front of the office of the _Evening Times_.

He stood for a moment, drawing in the fresh March air, sweet with the
breath of approaching spring. The fog of last night had vanished,
leaving no trace. He caught the scent of Southern lilacs from an
adjoining florist shop.

He took the stairs three at a time.

"Chief in yet?" he inquired of Jamieson, the news editor, who looked up
in astonishment at his entrance, and then at the clock.

"No, he's not down yet. You've broken your record."

Frank nodded.

"I've got to get away early."

Tossing his hat upon his desk, he sat down and went methodically through
his papers. He unfolded his _Times_, his mind intent upon the problem
of the missing millionaire. He had not seen Doris since that night in
the box. The first paper under his hand was an early edition of a rival
evening journal.

He glanced down at the headlines on the front page, then with a
horrified cry he sprang to his feet. He was pale, and the hand which
gripped the paper shook.

"Good Lord!" he exclaimed.

Jamieson swung round in his swivel chair.

"What's up?" he inquired.

"Farrington!" said Frank, huskily. "Farrington has committed suicide!"

"Yes, we've a column about it," remarked Jamieson, complacently. "A
pretty good story." Then suddenly: "You knew him?" he asked.

Frank Doughton lifted a face from which every vestige of colour had been
drained. "I--I was with him at the theatre on the night he disappeared,"
he said.

Jamieson whistled softly.

Doughton rose hurriedly and reached for his hat.

"I must go to them. Perhaps something can be done. Doris----" he broke
off, unable to continue, and turned away sharply.

Jamieson looked at him sympathetically.

"Why don't you go round to Brakely Square?" he suggested. "There may be
new developments--possibly a mistake. You note that the body has not
been discovered."

Out upon the pavement, Frank caught a passing taxi.

He drove first to the city offices which were Farrington's headquarters.
A short talk with the chief clerk was more than enlightening. A brief
note in the handwriting of the millionaire announced his intention,
"tired of the world," to depart therefrom.

"But why?" asked the young man, in bewilderment.

"Mr. Doughton, you don't seem to quite realize the importance of this
tragedy," said the chief clerk, quietly. "Mr. Farrington was a financial
king--a multi-millionaire. Or at least, he was so considered up till
this morning. We have examined his private books, and it now appears
that he had speculated heavily during the last few weeks--he has lost
everything, every penny of his own and his ward's fortune. Last night,
in a fit of despair, he ended his life. Even his chief clerk had no
knowledge of his transactions."

Doughton looked at him in a kind of stupefaction. Was it of Farrington
the man was talking such drivel? Farrington, who only the week before
had told him in high gratification that within the last month he had
added a cool million to his ward's marriage portion. Farrington, who
had, but two days ago, hinted mysteriously of a gigantic financial coup
in the near future. And now all that fortune was lost, and the loser was
lying at the bottom of the Thames!

"I think I must be going mad," he muttered. "Mr. Farrington wasn't the
kind to kill himself."

"It is not as yet known to the public, but I think I may tell you, since
you were a friend of Farrington's, that Mr. T. B. Smith has been given
charge of the matter. He will probably wish to know your address. And in
the meantime, if you run across anything----"

"Certainly! I will let you know. Smith is an able man, of course."
Doughton gave the number of his chambers, and retreated hastily, glad
that the man had questioned him no further.

He found his cab and flung himself wearily against the cushions. And now
for Doris!

But Doris was not visible. Lady Dinsmore met him in the morning room,
her usually serene countenance full of trouble. He took her hand in
silence.

"It is good of you, my dear Frank, to come so quickly. You have heard
all?"

He nodded.

"How is Doris?"

She sank into a chair and shook her head.

"The child is taking it terribly hard! Quite tearless, but with a face
like frozen marble! She refused to believe the news, until she saw his
own writing. Then she fainted."

Lady Dinsmore took out her lace handkerchief and wiped her eyes.

"Doris," she continued, in a moment, "has sent for Count Poltavo."

Frank stared at her.

"Why?" he demanded.

Lady Dinsmore shook her head.

"I cannot say, definitely," she replied, with a sigh. "She is a silent
girl. But I fancy she feels that the Count knows something--she believes
that Gregory met with foul play."

Frank leaned forward.

"My own idea!" he said, quietly.

Lady Dinsmore surveyed him with faint, good-humoured scorn.

"You do not know Gregory," she said, after a pause.

"But--I do not follow you! If it was not murder it must have been
suicide. But why should Mr. Farrington kill himself?"

"I am sure that he had not the slightest idea of doing anything so
unselfish," returned Lady Dinsmore, composedly.

"Then what----"

"Why are you so absolutely sure that he _is_ dead?" she asked softly.

Frank stared at her in blank amazement.

"What do you mean?" he gasped. Was she mad also?

"Simply that he is no more dead than you or I," she retorted, coolly.
"What evidence have we? A letter, in his own handwriting, telling us
gravely that he has decided to die! Does it sound probable? It is a safe
presumption that that is the farthest thing from his intentions. For
when did Gregory ever tell the truth concerning his movements? No,
depend upon it, he is not dead. For purposes of his own, he is
pretending to be. He has decided to exist--surreptitiously."

"Why should he?" asked the bewildered young man. This was the maddest
theory of all. His head swam with a riot of conflicting impressions. He
seemed to have been hurled headlong into a frightful nightmare, and he
longed to emerge again into the light of the prosaic, everyday world.

The door at the farther end of the room opened. He looked up eagerly,
half expecting to see Farrington himself, smiling upon the threshold.

It was Doris. She stood there for a moment, uncertain, gazing at them
rather strangely. In her white morning dress, slightly crumpled, and her
dark hair arranged in smooth bandeaux, she was amazingly like a child.
The somewhat cold spring sunlight which streamed through the window
showed that the event of the night had already set its mark upon her.
There were faint violet shadows beneath her eyes, and her face was pale.

Frank came forward hastily, everything blotted from his mind but the
sight of her white, grief-stricken face. He took both her hands in his
warm clasp.

The girl gave him a long, searching scrutiny, then her lips quivered,
and with a smothered sob she flung herself into his arms and hid her
face on his shoulder.

Frank held her tenderly. "Don't," he whispered unsteadily--"don't cry,
dear."

In her sorrow, she was inexpressibly sweet and precious to him.

He bent down and smoothed with gentle fingers the soft, dusky hair. The
fragrance of it filled his nostrils. Its softness sent a delicious
ecstasy thrilling from his finger-tips up his arm. All his life he
would remember this one moment. He gazed down at her tenderly, a
wonderful light in his young face.

"Dear!" he whispered again.

She lifted a pallid face to him. Her violet eyes were misty, and tiny
drops of dew were still tangled in her lashes.

"You--you are good to me," she murmured.

At his answering look, a faint colour swept into her cheeks. She gently
disengaged herself and sat down.

Lady Dinsmore came forward, and seating herself beside the girl upon the
divan, drew her close within the shelter of her arms.

"Now, Frank," she said, cheerily, indicating a chair opposite, "sit
down, and let us take counsel together. And first of all,"--she pressed
the girl's cold hand--"let me speak my strongest conviction. Gregory is
not dead. Something tells me that he is safe and well."

Doris turned her eyes to the young man wistfully. "You have heard
something--later?" she asked.

He shook his head. "There has been no time for fresh developments yet.
Scotland Yard is in charge of the affair, and T. B. Smith has been put
upon the case."

She shuddered and covered her face with her hands.

"He said he was going to arrest him--how strange and ghastly it all is!"
she whispered. "I--I cannot get it out of my head. The dark river--my
poor uncle--I can see him there--" She broke off.

Lady Dinsmore looked helplessly across to the young man.

It was at that moment that a servant brought a letter.

Lady Dinsmore arched her eyebrows significantly. "Poltavo!" she
murmured.

Doris darted forward and took the letter from the salver. She broke the
seal and tore out the contents, and seemed to comprehend the message at
a glance. A little cry of joy escaped her. Her face, which had been
pale, flushed a rosy hue. She bent to read it again, her lips parted.
Her whole aspect breathed hope and assurance. She folded the note,
slipped it into her bosom, and, without a word, walked from the room.

Frank stared after her, white to the lips with rage and wounded love.

Lady Dinsmore rose briskly to her feet.

"Excuse me. Wait here!" she said, and rustled after her niece.

Frank Doughton paced up and down the room distractedly, momentarily
expecting her reappearance. Only a short half-hour ago, with Doris' head
upon his breast, he had felt supremely happy; now he was plunged into an
abyss of utter wretchedness. What were the contents of that brief note
which had affected her so powerfully? Why should she secrete it with
such care unless it conveyed a lover's assurance? His foot came into
contact with a chair, and he swore under his breath.

The servant, who had entered unobserved, coughed deprecatingly.

"Her ladyship sends her excuses, sir," he said, "and says she will write
you later."

He ushered the young man to the outer door.

Upon the top step Frank halted stiffly. He found himself face to face
with Poltavo.

The Count greeted him gravely.

"A sad business!" he murmured. "You have seen the ladies? How does Miss
Gray bear it? She is well?"

Frank gazed at him darkly.

"Your note recovered her!" he said, quietly.

"Mine!" Surprise was in the Count's voice. "But I have not written. I am
come in person."

Frank's face expressed scornful incredulity. He lifted his hat grimly
and descended the steps, and came into collision with a smiling,
brown-faced man.

"Mr. Smith!" he said, eagerly, "is there any news?"

T. B. looked at him curiously.

"The Thames police have picked up the body of a man bearing upon his
person most of Mr. Farrington's private belongings."

"Then it is true! It is suicide?"

T. B. looked past him.

"If a man cut his own head off before jumping into the river, it was
suicide," he said carefully, "for the body is headless. As for myself, I
have never witnessed such a phenomenon, and I am sceptical."


A train drew into the arrival platform at Waterloo and a tall man
alighted. Nearer at hand he did not appear to be so young as the first
impression suggested. For there was a powdering of grey at each temple
and certain definite lines about his mouth.

His face was tanned brown, and it required no great powers of
observation and deduction to appreciate the fact that he had recently
returned to England after residence in a hot climate.

He stood on the edge of the curb outside the new entrance of the
station, hesitating whether he should take his chance of finding a cab
or whether he should pick up one in the street, for the night was wet
and cold and his train had been full.

Whilst he stood a big taxi came noiselessly to the curb and the driver
touched his cap.

"Thank you," said the man with a smile. "You can drive me to the
Metropole."

He swung the door open and his foot was on the step when a hand touched
him lightly, and he turned to meet the scrutiny of a pair of humorous
grey eyes.

"I think you had better take another cab, Dr. Goldworthy," said the
stranger.

"I am afraid----" began the doctor.

The driver of the car, after a swift glance at the new-comer, would have
driven off, but an unmistakable detective-officer had jumped on to the
step by his side.

"I am sorry," said T. B. Smith, for he it was who had detained the young
doctor, "but I will explain. Don't bother about the taxi driver; my men
will see after him. You have had a narrow escape of being kidnapped," he
added.

He drove the puzzled doctor to Scotland Yard, and piece by piece he
extracted the story of one George Doughton who had died in his arms, of
a certain box containing papers which the doctor had promised to deliver
to Lady Constance, and of how that lady learnt the news of her sometime
lover's death.

"Thank you," said T. B. when the other had finished. "I think I
understand."




CHAPTER VIII


It was the morning after the recovery of Farrington's body that T. B.
Smith sat in his big study overlooking Brakely Square. He had finished
his frugal breakfast, the tray had been taken away, and he was busy at
his desk when his man-servant announced Lady Constance Dex. T. B. looked
at the card with an expressionless face.

"Show the lady up, George," he said, and rose to meet his visitor as she
came sweeping through the doorway.

A very beautiful woman was his first impression. Whatever hardness there
was in the face, whatever suggestion there might be of those masterful
qualities about which he had heard, there could be no questioning the
rare clearness of the skin, the glories of those hazel eyes, or the
exquisite modelling of the face. He judged her to be on the right side
of thirty, and was not far out, for Lady Constance Dex at that time was
twenty-seven.

She was well, even richly, dressed, but she did not at first give this
impression. T. B. imagined that she might be an authority on dress, and
in this he took an accurate view, for though not exactly a leader of
fashion, Lady Constance had perfect taste in such matters.

He pulled forward a chair to the side of his desk.

"Won't you sit down?" he said.

She gave a brief smile as she seated herself.

"I am afraid you will think I am a bore, disturbing you, Mr. Smith,
especially at this hour of the morning, but I wanted to see you about
the extraordinary happenings of the past few days. I have just come up
to town," she went on; "in fact, I came up the moment I heard the news."

"Mr. Farrington is, or was, a friend of yours?" said T. B.

She nodded.

"He and I have been good friends for many years," she replied, quietly;
"he is an extraordinary man with extraordinary qualities."

"By the way," said T. B., "his niece was staying with you a few nights
ago, was she not?"

Lady Constance Dex inclined her head.

"She came to a ball I was giving, and stayed the night," she said. "I
motored back to Great Bradley after the dance, so that I have not seen
her since I bade her good night. I am going along to see what I can do
for her," she concluded. She had been speaking very deliberately and
calmly, but now it was with an effort that she controlled her voice.

"I understand, Mr. Smith," she said suddenly, "that you have a small
scent bottle which is my property; Mr. Farrington wrote to me about it."

T. B. nodded.

"It was found in the area of Mr. Farrington's house," he said, "on the
night that the two men were killed in Brakely Square."

"What do you suggest?" she asked.

"I suggest that you were at Mr. Farrington's house that night," said T.
B. bluntly. "We are speaking now, Lady Constance, as frankly as it is
possible for man and woman to speak. I suggest that you were in the
house at the time of the shooting, and that when you heard the shots you
doubled back into the house, through the kitchen, and out again by a
back way."

He saw her lips press tighter together, and went on carelessly:

"You see, I was not satisfied with the examination I made that night. I
came again in the early hours of the morning, when the fog had risen a
little, and there was evidence of your retirement plainly to be seen.
The back of the house opens into Brakely Mews, and I find there are four
motor-cars located in the various garages in that interesting
thoroughfare, none of which correspond with the tire tracks which I was
able to pick up. My theory is that you heard the altercation before the
house, that you came out to listen, not to make your escape, and that
when you had satisfied yourself you hurried back to the mews, got into
the car which was waiting for you, and drove off through the fog."

"You are quite a real detective," she drawled. "Can you tell me anything
more?"

"Save that you drove yourself and that the car was a two-seater, with a
self-starting arrangement, I can tell you nothing." She laughed.

"I am afraid you have been all the way to Great Bradley making
inquiries," she mocked him. "Everybody there knows I drive a car, and
everybody who takes the trouble to find out will learn that it is such a
car as you describe."

"But I have not taken that trouble," said T. B. with a smile. "I am
curious to know, Lady Constance, what you were doing in the house at
that time. I do not for one moment suspect that you shot these men;
indeed, I have plenty of evidence that the shots were fired from some
other place than the area."

"Suppose I say," she countered, "that I was giving a party that night,
that I did not leave my house."

"If you said that," he interrupted, "you would be contradicting
something you have already said; namely, that you did leave the house, a
journey in the middle of the night as far as I can gather, and evidently
one which was of considerable moment."

She looked past him out of the window, her face set, her brows knit in a
thoughtful frown.

"I can tell you a lot of things that possibly you do not know," she
said, turning to him suddenly. "I can explain my return to Great Bradley
very simply. There is a friend of mine, or rather a friend of my
friend," she corrected herself, "who has recently returned from West
Africa. I received news that he had gone to Great Bradley to carry a
message from some one who was very dear to me."

There was a little tremor in her voice, and, perfect actress as she
might be, thought T. B., there was little doubt that here she was
speaking the truth.

"It was necessary for me that I should not miss this visitor," said Lady
Constance, quietly, "though I do not wish to make capital out of that
happening."

"I must again interrupt you," said T. B. easily. "The person you are
referring to was Dr. Thomas Goldworthy, who has recently returned from
an expedition organized by the London School of Tropical Medicine, in
Congoland; but your story does not quite tally with the known fact that
Dr. Goldworthy arrived in Great Bradley the night before your party, and
you interviewed him then. He brought with him a wooden box which he had
collected at the Custom House store at the East India Docks. An attempt
was made by two burglars to obtain possession of that box and its
contents, a fact that interested me considerably, since a friend of mine
is engaged upon that somewhat mysterious case of attempted burglary. But
that is confusing the issue. These are the facts." He tapped the table
slowly as he enumerated them. "Dr. Goldworthy brought this box to Great
Bradley, telegraphed to you that he was coming, and you interviewed him.
It was subsequent to the interview that you returned to London for your
party. Really, Lady Constance, your memory is rather bad."

She faced him suddenly resolute, defiant.

"What are you going to do?" she asked. "You do not accuse me of the
murder of your two friends; you cannot even accuse me of the attempt on
Mr. Farrington. You know so much of my history," she went on, speaking
rapidly, "that you may as well know more. Years ago, Mr. Smith, I was
engaged to a man, and we were passionately fond of one another. His name
was George Doughton."

"The explorer," nodded T. B.

"He went abroad," she continued, "suddenly and unexpectedly, breaking
off our engagement for no reason that I could ascertain, and all my
letters to him, all my telegrams, and every effort I made to get in
touch with him during the time he was in Africa were without avail. For
four years I had no communication from him, no explanation of his
extraordinary behaviour, and then suddenly I received news of his death.
At first it was thought he had died as a result of fever, but Dr.
Goldworthy who came to see me convinced me that George Doughton was
poisoned by somebody who was interested in his death."

Her voice trembled, but with an effort she recovered herself.

"All these years I have not forgotten him, his face has never left my
mind, he has been as precious to me as though he were by my side in the
flesh. Love dies very hard in women of my age, Mr. Smith," she said,
"and love injured and outraged as mine has been developed all the tiger
passion which women can nurture. I have learnt for the first time why
George Doughton went out to his death. He used to tell me," she said, as
she rose from her chair, and paced the room slowly, "that when you are
shooting wild beasts you should always shoot the female of the species
first, because if she is left to the last she will avenge her
slaughtered mate. There is a terrible time coming for somebody," she
said, speaking deliberately.

"For whom?" asked T. B.

She smiled.

"I think you know too much already, Mr. Smith," she said; "you must find
out all the rest in your own inimitable way; so far as I am concerned,
you must leave me to work out my plan of vengeance. That sounds horribly
melodramatic, but I am just as horribly in earnest, as you shall learn.
They took George Doughton from me and they murdered him; the man who did
this was Montague Fallock, and I am perhaps the only person in the world
who has met Montague Fallock in life and have known him to be what he
is."

She would say no more, and T. B. was too cautious a man to force the
pace at this particular moment. He saw her to the door, where her
beautiful limousine was awaiting her.

"I hope to meet you again very soon, Lady Constance."

"Without a warrant?" she smiled.

"I do not think it will be with a warrant," he said, quietly, "unless
it is for your friend Fallock."

He stood in the hall and watched the car disappear swiftly round the
corner of the square. Scarcely was it out of sight than from the little
thoroughfare which leads from the mews at the back of the houses shot a
motor-cyclist who followed in the same direction as the car had taken.

T. B. nodded approvingly; he was leaving nothing to chance. Lady
Constance Dex would not be left day or night free from observation.

"And she did not mention Farrington!" he said to himself, as he mounted
the stairs. "One would almost think he was alive."

It was nine o'clock that evening when the little two-seated motor-car
which Lady Constance drove so deftly came spinning along the broad road
which runs into Great Bradley, skirted the town by a side road and
gained the great rambling rectory which stood apart from the little town
in its own beautiful grounds. She sprang lightly out of the car.

The noise of the wheels upon the gravel walk had brought a servant to
the door, and she brushed past the serving man without a word; ran
upstairs to her own room and closed and locked the door behind her
before she switched on the electric light. The electric light was an
unusual possession in so small a town, but she owed its presence in the
house to her friendship with that extraordinary man who was the occupant
of the Secret House.

Three miles away, out of sight of the rectory in a fold of the hill was
this great gaunt building, erected, so popular gossip said, by one who
had been crossed in love and desired to live the life of a recluse, a
desire which was respected by the superstitious town-folk of Great
Bradley. The Secret House had been built in the hollow which was known
locally as "Murderers' Valley," a pretty little glen which many years
before had been the scene of an outrageous crime. The house added to,
rather than detracted from, the reputation of the glen; no man saw the
occupant of the Secret House; his secretary and his two Italian servants
came frequently to Great Bradley to make their purchases; now and again
his closed car would whizz through the streets; and Great Bradley,
speculating as to the identity of its owner, could do no more than hope
that one of these fine days a wheel would come off that closed car and
its occupant be forced to disclose himself.

But in the main the town was content to allow the eccentric owner of the
Secret House all the privacy he desired. He might do things which were
unheard of, as indeed he did, and Great Bradley, standing aloof, was
content to thank God that it was not cast in the same bizarre mould as
this wealthy unknown, and took comfort from the reflection.

For he did many curious things. He had a power house of his own; you
could see the chimney showing over Wadleigh Copse, with dynamos of
enormous power which generated all that was necessary for lighting and
heating the big house.

There were honest British working men in Great Bradley who spoke
bitterly of the owner's preference for foreign labour, and it was a fact
that the men engaged in the electrical works were without exception of
foreign origin. They had their quarters and lived peacefully apart,
neither offering nor desiring the confidence of their fellow-townsmen.
They were, in fact, frugal people of the Latin race who had no other
wish than to work hard and to save as much of their salaries as was
possible in order that at some future date they might return to their
beloved Italy, and live in peace with the world; they were well paid for
their discretion, a sufficient reason for its continuance.

Lady Constance Dex had been fortunate in that she had secured one of the
few favours which the Secret House had shown to the town. An underground
cable had been laid to her house, and she alone of all human beings in
the world was privileged to enter the home of this mysterious stranger
without challenge.

She busied herself for some time changing her dress and removing the
signs of her hasty journey from London. Her maid brought her dinner on a
tray, and when she had finished she went again into her boudoir, and
opening the drawer of her bureau she took out a slender-barrelled
revolver. She looked at it for some time, carefully examined the
chambers and into each dropped a nickel-tipped cartridge. She snapped
back the hinged chamber and slipped the pistol into a pocket of her
woollen cloak. She locked the bureau again and went out through the door
and down the stairs. Her car was still waiting, but she turned to the
servant who stood deferentially by the door.

"Have the car put in the garage," she said; "I am going to see Mrs.
Jackson."

"Very good, my lady," said the man.




CHAPTER IX


T. B. Smith came down to Great Bradley with only one object in view. He
knew that the solution to the mystery, not only of Farrington's
disappearance, but possibly the identity of the mysterious Mr. Fallock,
was to be found rather in this small town than in the metropolis.
Scotland Yard was on its mettle. Within a space of seven days there had
been two murders, a mysterious shooting, and a suicide so full of
extraordinary features as to suggest foul play, without the police being
in the position to offer a curious and indignant public the slightest
resemblance of a clue. This, following as it had upon a shooting affray
at the Docks, had brought Scotland Yard to a position of defence.

"There are some rotten things being said about us," said the Chief
Commissioner on the morning of T. B.'s departure. He threw a paper
across the table, and T. B. picked it up with an enigmatic smile. He
read the flaring column in which the intelligence of the police
department was called into question, without a word, and handed the
paper back to his chief.

"I think we might solve all these mysteries in one swoop," he said. "I
am going down to-day to inspect the Secret House--that is where one end
of the solution lies."

The Chief Commissioner looked interested.

"It is very curious that you should be talking about that," he said. "I
have had a report this morning from the chief constable of the county on
that extraordinary menage."

"And what has he to say about it?"

Sir Gordon Billings shrugged his shoulders.

"It is one of those vague reports which chief constables are in the
habit of furnishing," he said, drily. "Apparently the owner is an
American, an invalid, and is eccentric. More than this--and this will
surprise you--he has been certified by competent medical authorities as
being insane."

"Insane?" T. B. repeated in surprise.

"Insane," nodded the chief; "and he has all the privileges which the
Lunacy Act confers upon a man. That is rather a facer."

T. B. looked thoughtful.

"I had a dim idea that I might possibly discover in the occupant one
who was, at any rate, a close relative to Fallock."

"You are doomed to disappointment," smiled the chief; "there is no doubt
about that. I have had all the papers up. The man was certified insane
by two eminent specialists, and is under the care of a doctor who lives
on the premises, and who also acts as secretary to this Mr. Moole. The
secret of the Secret House is pretty clear; it is a private lunatic
asylum,--that, and nothing else."

T. B. thought for a while.

"At any rate no harm can be done by interviewing this cloistered Mr.
Moole, or by inspecting the house," he said.

He arrived in Great Bradley in the early part of the afternoon, and
drove straight away to the Secret House. The flyman put him down at some
distance from the big entrance gate, and he made a careful and cautious
reconnaissance of the vicinity. The house was a notable one. It made no
pretence at architectural beauty, standing back from the road, and in
the very centre of a fairly uncultivated patch of ground. All that
afternoon he measured and observed the peculiarities of the approach,
the lie of the ground, the entrances, and the exits, and had obtained
too a cautious and careful observation of the great electrical power
house, which stood in a clump of trees about a hundred yards from the
house itself.

The next morning he paid a more open visit. This time his fly put him
down at the gateway of the house, and he moved slowly up the gravel
pathway to the big front entrance door. He glanced at the tip of the
power house chimney which showed over the trees, and shook his head in
some doubt. He had furtively inspected the enormous plant which the
eccentric owner of the Secret House had found it necessary to lay down.

"Big enough to run an electric railway," was his mental comment. He had
seen, too, the one-eyed engineer, a saturnine man with a disfiguring
scar down one side of his face, and a trick of showing his teeth on one
side of his mouth when he smiled.

T. B. would have pursued his investigations further, but suddenly he had
felt something click under his feet, as he stood peering in at the
window, and instantly a gong had clanged, and a shutter dropped
noiselessly behind the window, cutting off all further view.

T. B. had retired hastily and had cleared the gates just before they
swung to, obviously operated by somebody in the power house.

His present visit was less furtive and it was in broad daylight, with
two detectives ostentatiously posted at the gates, that he made his
call--for he took no unnecessary risks.

He walked up the four broad marble steps to the portico of the house,
and wiped his feet upon a curious metal mat as he pressed the bell. The
door itself was half hidden by a hanging curtain, such as one may see
screening the halls of suburban houses, made up of brightly coloured
beads or lengths of bamboo. In this case it was made by suspending
thousands of steel beads upon fine wire strings from a rod above the
door. It gave the impression that the entrance itself was of steel, but
when in answer to his summons the door was opened, the _chick_ looped
itself up on either side in the manner of a stage curtain, and it seemed
to work automatically on the opening of the door.

There stood in the entrance a tall man, with a broad white face and
expressionless eyes. He was dressed soberly in black, and had the
restrained and deferential attitude of the superior man-servant.

"I am Mr. Smith, of Scotland Yard," said T. B. briefly, "and I wish to
see Mr. Moole."

The man in black looked dubious.

"Will you come in?" he asked, and T. B. was shown into a large
comfortably furnished sitting-room.

"I am afraid you can't see Mr. Moole," said the man, as he closed the
door behind him; "he is, as you probably know, a partial invalid, but if
there is anything I can do----"

"You can take me to Mr. Moole," said T. B. with a smile; "short of
that--nothing."

The man hesitated.

"If you insist," he began.

The detective nodded.

"I am his secretary and his doctor--Doctor Fall," the other introduced
himself, "and it may mean trouble for me--perhaps you will tell me your
business?"

"My business is with Mr. Moole."

The doctor bowed.

"Come this way," he said, and he led the detective across the broad
hall. He opened a plain door, and disclosed a small lift, standing aside
for the other to enter.

"After you," said T. B. politely.

Dr. Fall smiled and entered, and T. B. Smith followed.

The lift shot swiftly upward and came to a rest at the third floor.

It was not unlike an hotel, thought T. B., in the general arrangement of
the place.

Two carpeted corridors ran left and right, and the wall before him was
punctured with doorways at regular intervals. His guide led him to the
left, to the end of the passage, and opened the big rosewood door which
faced him. Inside was another door. This he opened, and entered a big
apartment and T. B. followed. The room contained scarcely any furniture.
The panelling on the walls was of polished myrtle; a square of deep blue
carpet of heavy pile was set exactly in the centre, and upon this stood
a silver bedstead. But it was not the furnishing or the rich little gilt
table by the bedside or the hanging electrolier which attracted T. B.'s
attention; rather his eyes fell instantly upon the man on the bed.

A man with an odd yellow face, who, with his steady unwinking eyes might
have been a figure of wax save for the regular rise and fall of his
breast, and the spasmodic twitching of his lips. T. B. judged him to be
somewhere in the neighbourhood of seventy, and, if anything, older. His
face was without expression; his eyes, which turned upon the intruder,
were bright and beady.

"This is Mr. Moole," said the suave secretary. "I am afraid if you talk
to him you will get little in the way of information."

T. B. stepped to the side of the bed and looked down. He nodded his head
in greeting, but the other made no response.

"How are you, Mr. Moole?" said T. B. gently. "I have come down from
London to see you."

There was still no response from the shrunken figure under the
bedclothes.

"What is your name?" asked T. B. after a while.

For an instant a gleam of intelligence came to the eyes of the wreck.
His mouth opened tremulously and a husky voice answered him.

"Jim Moole," it croaked, "poor old Jim Moole; ain't done nobody harm."

Then his eyes turned fearfully to the man at T. B.'s side; the old lips
came tightly together and no further encouragement from T. B. could make
him speak again.

A little later T. B. was ushered out of the room.

"You agree with me," said the doctor smoothly, "Mr. Moole is not in a
position to carry on a very long conversation."

T. B. nodded.

"I quite agree," he said, pleasantly. "An American millionaire--Mr.
Moole--is he not?"

Dr. Fall inclined his head. His black eyes never left T. B.'s face.

"An American millionaire," he repeated.

"He does not talk like an American," said T. B.; "even making allowances
that one must for his mental condition, there is no inducement to
accept the phenomenon."

"Which phenomenon?" asked the other, quickly.

"That which causes an American millionaire, a man probably of some
refinement and education, at any rate of some lingual characteristics,
to talk like a Somerset farm labourer."

"What do you mean?" asked the other harshly.

"Just what I say," said T. B. Smith; "he has the burr of a man who has
been brought up in Somerset. He is obviously one who has had very little
education. My impression of him does not coincide with your
description."

"I think, Mr. Smith," said the other, quietly, "that you have had very
little acquaintance with people who are mentally deficient, otherwise
you would know that those unfortunate fellow-creatures of ours who are
so afflicted are very frequently as unrecognizable from their speech as
from their actions."

He led the way to the lift door, but T. B. declined its service.

"I would rather walk down," he said.

He wanted to be better acquainted with this house, to have a larger
knowledge of its topography than the ascent and descent by means of an
electric lift would allow him. Dr. Fall offered no objection, and led
the way down the red carpeted stairs.

"I am well acquainted with people of unsound mind," T. B. went on,
"especially that section of the insane whose lunacy takes the form of
dropping their aitches."

"You are being sarcastic at my expense," said the other, suddenly
turning to him with a lowered brow. "I think it is only right to tell
you that, in addition to being Mr. Moole's secretary, I am a doctor."

"That is also no news to me," smiled T. B. "You are an American doctor
with a Pennsylvania degree. You came to England in eighteen hundred and
ninety-six, on board the _Lucania_. You left New York hurriedly as the
result of some scandal in which you were involved. It is, in fact, much
easier to trace your movements since the date of your arrival than it is
to secure exact information concerning Mr. Moole, who is apparently
quite unknown to the American Embassy."

The large face of the secretary flushed to a deep purple.

"You are possibly exceeding your duty," he said, gratingly, "in
recalling a happening of which I was but an innocent victim."

"Possibly I am," agreed T. B.

He bowed slightly to the man, and descended the broad steps to the
unkempt lawn in front of the house. He was joined at the gate by the two
men he had brought down. One of these was Ela.

"What did you find?" asked that worthy man.

"I found much that will probably be useful to us in the future," said T.
B., as he stepped into the fly, followed by his subordinate.

He turned to the third detective.

"You had better wait here," he said, "and report on who arrives and who
departs. I shall be back within a couple of hours."

The man saluted, and the fly drove off.

"I have one more call to make," said T. B. Smith, "and I had better make
that alone, I think. Tell the flyman to drop me at Little Bradley
Rectory."

Lady Constance Dex was not unprepared for the visit of the detective.
She had seen him from the window of her room, driving past the rectory
in the direction of the Secret House, and he found her expectantly
waiting him in the drawing-room.

He came straight to the heart of the matter.

"I have just been to visit a man who I understand is a friend of yours,"
he said.

She inclined her head.

"You mean Mr. Moole?"

"That is the man," said the cheerful T. B.

She thought for a long time before she spoke again. She was evidently
making up her mind as to how much she would tell this insistent officer
of the law.

"I suppose you might as well know the whole facts of the case," she
said; "if you will sit over there, I will supplement the information I
gave you in Brakely Square a few days ago."

T. B. seated himself.

"I am certainly a visitor to the Secret House," she said, after a while.
She did not look at the detective as she spoke, but kept her gaze fixed
upon the window and the garden without.

"I told you that I have had one love affair in my life; that affair,"
she went on steadily, "was with George Doughton; you probably know his
son."

T. B. nodded.

"It was a case of love at first sight. George Doughton was a widower, a
good-natured, easy-going, lovable man. He was a brave and brilliant man
too, famous as an explorer as you know. I met him first in London; he
introduced me to the late Mr. Farrington, who was a friend of his, and
when Mr. Farrington came to Great Bradley and took a house here for the
summer, George Doughton came down as his guest, and I got to know him
better than ever I had known any human being before in my life."

She hesitated again.

"We were lovers," she went on, defiantly,--"why should I not confess to
an experience of which I am proud?--and our marriage was to have taken
place on the very day he sailed for West Africa. George Doughton was the
very soul of honour, a man to whom the breath of scandal was as a desert
wind, withering and terrible. He was never in sympathy with the modern
spirit of our type, was old-fashioned in some respects, had an immense
and beautiful conception of women and their purity, and carried his
prejudices against, what we call smart society, to such an extent that,
if a man or woman of his set was divorced in circumstances discreditable
to themselves, he would cut them out of his life."

Her voice faltered, and she seemed to find difficulty in continuing, but
she braced herself to it.

"I had been divorced," she went on, in a low voice; "in my folly I had
been guilty of an indiscretion which was sinless as it was foolish. I
had married a cold, rigid and remorseless man when I was little more
than a child, and I had run away from him with one who was never more to
me than a brother. A chivalrous, kindly soul who paid for his chivalry
dearly. All the evidence looked black against me, and my husband had no
difficulty in securing a divorce. It passed into the oblivion of
forgotten things, yet in those tender days when my love for George
Doughton grew I lived in terror least a breath of the old scandal should
be revived. I had reason for that terror, as I will tell you. I was, as
I say, engaged to be married. Two days before the wedding George
Doughton left me without a word of explanation. The first news that I
received was that he had sailed for Africa; thereafter I never heard
from him." She dropped her voice until she was hardly audible.

T. B. preserved a sympathetic silence. It was impossible to doubt the
truth of all she was saying, or to question her anguish. Presently she
spoke again.

"Mr. Farrington was most kind, and it was he who introduced me to Dr.
Fall."

"Why?" asked T. B. quickly.

She shook her head.

"I never understood until quite lately," she said. "At the time I
accepted as a fact that Dr. Fall had large interests in West Africa, and
would enable me to get into communication with George Doughton. I
clutched at straws, so to speak; I became a constant visitor to the
Secret House, the only outside visitor that extraordinary domain has
ever had within memory. I found that my visits were not without result.
I was enabled to trace the movements of my lover; I was enabled, too, to
send letters to him in the certainty that they would reach him. I have
reason now to know that Mr. Farrington had another object in introducing
me; he wanted me kept under the closest observation lest I should get
into independent communication with George Doughton. That is all the
story so far as my acquaintance with the Secret House is concerned. I
have only seen Mr. Moole on one occasion."

"And Farrington?" asked T. B.

She shook her head.

"I have never seen Mr. Farrington in the house," she replied.

"Or Montague Fallock?" he suggested.

She raised her eyebrows.

"I have never seen Montague Fallock," she said slowly, "though I have
heard from him. He, too, knew of the scandal; he it was who blackmailed
me in the days of my courtship."

"You did not tell me about that," said T. B.

"There is little to tell," she said, with a weary gesture; "it was this
mysterious blackmailer who terrified me, and to whose machinations I
ascribe George Doughton's discovery, for now I know that he was told of
my past, and was told by Montague Fallock. He demanded impossible sums.
I gave him as much as I could, almost ruined myself to keep this
blackmailer at bay, but all to no purpose."

She rose and paced the room.

"I have not finished with Montague Fallock," she said.

She turned her white face to the detective, and he saw a hard gleam in
her eye.

"There is much that I could tell you, Mr. Smith, which would enable you
perhaps to bring to justice the most dastardly villain that has ever
walked the earth."

"May I suggest," said T. B. gently, "that you place me in possession of
those facts?"

She smiled, implying a negative.

"I have my own plans for avenging the murder of my lover and the ruin of
my life," she said hardly. "When Montague Fallock dies, I would rather
he died by my hand."




CHAPTER X


Count Poltavo, a busy man of affairs in these days, walked up the stairs
of the big block of flats in which he had his modest dwelling with a
little smile upon his lips and a sense of cheer in his heart. There were
many reasons why this broken adventurer, who had arrived in London only
a few months before with little more than his magnificent wardrobe,
should feel happy. He had been admitted suddenly into the circle of the
elect. Introductions had been found which paved a way for further
introductions. He was the confidential adviser of the most beautiful
woman in London, was the trusted of aristocrats. If there was a wrathful
and suspicious young newspaper man obviously and undisguisedly thirsting
for his blood that was not a matter which greatly affected the Count. It
had been his good fortune to surprise the secret of the late Mr.
Farrington; by the merest of chances he had happened upon the true
financial position of this alleged millionaire; had discovered him to
be a swindler and in league, so he guessed, with the mysterious Montague
Fallock. All this fine position which Farrington had built up was a
veritable house of cards. It remained now for the Count to discover how
far Farrington's affection for his niece had stayed his hand in his
predatory raid upon the cash balances of his friends and relatives.
Anyway, the Count thought, as he fitted a tiny key into the lock of his
flat, he was in a commanding position. He had all the winning cards in
his hand, and if the prizes included so delectable a reward as Doris
Gray might be, the Count, a sentimental if unscrupulous man, was
perfectly satisfied. He walked through his sitting-room to the bedroom
beyond and stood for a moment before the long mirror. It was a trick of
Count Poltavo to commune with himself, and when he was rallied on this
practice, suggestive of vanity to the uninitiated, he confirmed rather
than disabused that criticism by protesting that there was none whom he
could trust with such absence of fear of consequence as his own bright
worthy image.

He had reason for the smile which curved his thin lips. Every day he was
making progress which placed Doris Gray more and more, if not in his
power, at least under his influence.

He lived alone without any servants save for the old woman who came
every morning to tidy his flat, and when the bell rang as he stood
before the mirror, he answered it himself without any thought as to the
importance of the summons. For Count Poltavo was not above taking in the
milk or chaffering with tradesmen over the quality of a cabbage. It was
necessary that he must jealously husband his slender resources until
fate placed him in possession of a larger and a more generous fortune
than that which he now possessed. He opened the door, and took a step
back, then with a little bow:

"Come in, Mr. Doughton," he said.

Frank Doughton strode across the tiny hall, waited until the Count had
closed the door, and opened another, ushering the visitor into his
study.

"To what am I indebted for the honour of this visit?" asked Poltavo, as
he pushed forward a chair.

"I wanted to see you on a matter which deeply affects you and me," said
the young man briskly, even rudely.

Count Poltavo inclined his head. He recognized all the disagreeable
portents, but he was not in any way abashed or afraid. He had had
experience of many situations less pleasant than this threatened to be
and had played his part worthily.

"I can give you exactly a quarter of an hour," he said, looking at his
watch; "at the end of that period I must leave for Brakely Square. You
understand there is to be a reading of the will of our departed friend,
and----"

"I know all about that," interrupted Frank, roughly; "you are not the
only person who has been invited to that pleasant function."

"You also?" The Count was a little surprised. He himself went as friend
and adviser to the bereaved girl, a position which a certain letter had
secured for him. That letter in three brief lines had told the girl to
trust Poltavo. It was about this letter that Frank had come, and he came
straight to the point.

"Count Poltavo," he said, "the day after Mr. Farrington's disappearance
a messenger brought a letter for Miss Gray."

Poltavo nodded.

"So I understand," he said, smoothly.

"So you know," challenged the other, "because it concerned you. It was a
letter in which Doris was told to trust you absolutely; it was a letter
also which gave her hope that the man whose body was found in the Thames
was not that of Farrington."

Poltavo frowned.

"That is not a view that has been accepted by the authorities," he said
quickly. "The jury had no doubt that this was the body of Mr.
Farrington, and brought in a verdict accordingly."

Frank nodded.

"What a jury thinks and what Scotland Yard thinks," he said, drily, "are
not always in agreement. As a result of that letter," he went on, "Miss
Gray has reposed a great deal of trust in you, Count, and day by day my
efforts to serve her have been made more difficult by her attitude. I am
a plain-speaking Englishman, and I am coming to the point, right
now,"--he thumped the table: "Doris Gray's mind is becoming poisoned
against one who has no other object in life than to serve her
faithfully."

Count Poltavo shrugged his shoulders and smiled.

"My dear young man," he said, smoothly, "you do not come to me, I trust,
to act as your agent in order to induce Miss Gray to take any other view
of you than she does. Because if you do," he went on suavely, "I am
afraid that I cannot help you very much. There is an axiom in the
English language to which I subscribe most thoroughly, and it is that
'all is fair in love and war.'"

"In love?" repeated Frank, looking the other straight in the eyes.

"In love," the Count asserted, with a nod of his head, "it is not the
privilege of any human being to monopolize in his heart all the love in
the world, or to say this thing I love and none other shall love it.
Those qualities in Miss Gray which are so adorable to you are equally
adorable to me."

He spread out his hands in deprecation.

"It is a pity," he said, with his little smile, "and I would do anything
to avoid an unpleasant outcome to our rivalry. It is a fact that cannot
be gainsaid that such a rivalry exists. I have reason to know that the
late Mr. Farrington had certain views concerning his niece and ward, and
I flatter myself that those views were immensely favourable to me."

"What do you mean?" asked Frank, harshly.

The Count shrugged again.

"I had a little conversation with Mr. Farrington in the course of which
he informed me that he would like nothing better than to see the future
of Doris assured in my hands."

Frank went white.

"That is a lie," he said, hoarsely. "The views of Mr. Farrington were as
well known to me as they are to you--better, if that is your
interpretation of them."

"And they were?" asked the Count, curiously.

"I decline to discuss the matter with you," said Frank. "I want only to
tell you this. If by chance I discover that you are working against me
by your lies or your cunning, I will make you very sorry that you ever
came into my life."

"Allow me to show you the door," said Count Poltavo. "People of my race
and of my family are not usually threatened with impunity."

"Your race I pretty well know," said Frank, coolly; "your family is a
little more obscure. If it is necessary for me to go any farther into
the matter, and if I am so curious that I am anxious for information, I
shall know where to apply."

"And where will that be?" asked the Count softly, his hand upon the
door.

"To the Governor of Alexandrovski Prison," said Frank.

The Count closed the door behind his visitor, and stood for some moments
in thought.


It was a depressed little party which assembled an hour later in the
drawing-room of the Brakely Square house. To the Count's annoyance,
Frank was one of these, and he had contrived to secure a place near the
sad-faced girl and engage her in conversation. The Count did not deem it
advisable at this particular moment to make any attempt to separate
them: he was content to wait.

T. B. Smith was there.

He had secured an invitation by the simple process of informing those
responsible for the arrangements that if that courtesy was not offered
to him he would come in another capacity than that of a friend.

The senior partner of Messrs. Debenham & Tree, the great city lawyers,
was also present, seated at a table with his clerk, on which paper and
ink was placed, and where too, under the watchful eyes of his assistant,
was a bulky envelope heavily sealed.

There were many people present to whom the reading of this will would be
a matter of the greatest moment. Farrington had left no private debts.
Whatever plight the shareholders of the company might be in, he himself,
so far as his personal fortune was concerned, was certainly solvent.

T. B.'s inquiries had revealed, to his great astonishment, that the
girl's fortune was adequately secured. Much of the contents of the will,
which was to astonish at least three people that day, was known to T. B.
Smith, and he had pursued his investigations to the end of confirming
much which the dead millionaire had stated.

Presently, when Doris left the young man to go to the lawyer for a
little consultation, T. B. made his way across the room and sat down by
the side of Frank Doughton.

"You were a friend of Mr. Farrington's, were you not?" he asked.

Frank nodded.

"A great friend?"

"I hardly like to say that I was a great friend," said the other; "he
was very kind to me."

"In what way was he kind?" asked T. B. "You will forgive me for asking
these somewhat brutal questions, but as you know I have every reason to
be interested."

Frank smiled faintly.

"I do not think that you are particularly friendly disposed toward him,
Mr. Smith," he said; "in fact, I rather wonder that you are present,
after what happened at the theatre."

"After my saying that I wanted to arrest him," smiled T. B. "But why
not? Even millionaires get mixed up in curious illegal proceedings," he
said; "but I am rather curious to know what is the reason for Mr.
Farrington's affection and in what way he was kind to you."

Frank hesitated. He desired most of all to be loyal to the man who, with
all his faults, had treated him with such kindness.

"Well, for one thing," he said, "he gave me a jolly good commission, a
commission which might easily have brought me in a hundred thousand
pounds."

T. B.'s interest was awakened.

"What was that?" he asked.

In as few words as possible Frank told the story of the search for the
heir to the Tollington millions.

"Of course," he said, with an apologetic smile, "I was not the man for
the job--he should have given it to you. I am afraid I am not cut out
for a detective, but he was very keen on my taking the matter in hand."

T. B. bit his lips thoughtfully.

"I know something of the Tollington millions," he said; "they were left
by the timber king of America who died without issue, and whose heir or
heirs were supposed to be in this country. We have had communications
about the matter."

He frowned again as he conjured to his mind all the data of this
particular case.

"Of course, Farrington was one of the trustees; he was a friend of old
Tollington. That money would not be involved," he said, half to himself,
"because the four other trustees are men of integrity holding high
positions in the financial world of the United States. Thank you for
telling me; I will look up the matter, and if I can be of any
assistance to you in carrying out Mr. Farrington's wishes you may be
sure that I will."

There was a stir at the other end of the room. With a preliminary cough,
the lawyer rose, the papers in his hand.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he said, and a silence fell upon the room, "it
is my duty to read to you the terms of the late Mr. Farrington's will,
and since it affects a great number of people in this room, I shall be
glad if you will retain the deepest silence."

There was a murmur of agreement all round, and the lawyer began reading
the preliminary and conventional opening of the legal document. The will
began with one or two small bequests to charitable institutions, and the
lawyer looking over his glasses said pointedly:

"I need hardly say that there will be no funds available from the estate
for carrying out the wishes of the deceased gentleman in this respect,
since they are all contingent upon Mr. Farrington possessing a certain
sum at his death which I fear he did not possess. The will goes on to
say," he continued reading:

"'KNOWING that my dear niece and ward is amply provided for, I can do no
more than leave her an expression of my trust and love, and it may be
taken as my last and final request that she marries with the least
possible delay the person whom it is my most earnest desire she should
take as a husband.'"

Two people in the audience felt a sudden cold thrill of anticipation.

"'That person,'" continued the lawyer, solemnly, "'is my good friend,
Frank Doughton.'"

There was a gasp from Frank; a startled exclamation from the girl.
Poltavo went red and white and his eyes glowed. T. B. Smith, to whom
this portion of the will was known, watched the actors keenly. He saw
the bewildered face of the girl, the rage in Poltavo's eyes, and the
blank astonishment on the face of Frank as the lawyer went on:

"'Knowing the insecurity of present-day investments, and seized with the
fear that the fortune entrusted to my keeping might be dissipated by one
of those strange accidents of finance with which we are all acquainted,
I have placed the whole of her fortune, to the value of eight hundred
thousand pounds, in a safe at the London Safe Deposit, and in the terms
of the power vested in me as trustee by her late father I have
instructed my lawyers to hand her the key and the authority to open the
safe on the day she marries the aforesaid Frank Doughton. And if she
should refuse or through any cause or circumstance decline to carry out
my wishes in this respect, I direct that the fortune contained therein
shall be withheld from her for the space of five years as from the date
of my death.'"

There was another long silence. T. B. saw the change come over the face
of Poltavo. From rage he had passed to wonder, from wonder to suspicion,
and from suspicion to anger again. T. B. would have given something
substantial to have known what was going on inside the mind of this
smooth adventurer. Again the lawyer's voice insisted upon attention.

"'To Frank Doughton,'" he read, "'I bequeath the sum of a thousand
pounds to aid him in his search for the Tollington heir. To T. B. Smith,
the assistant commissioner at Scotland Yard with whom I have had some
acquaintance, and whose ability I hold in the highest regard, I leave
the sum of a thousand pounds as a slight reward for his service to
civilization, and I direct that on the day he discovers the most
insidious enemy to society, Montague Fallock, he shall receive a further
sum of one thousand pounds from the trustees of my estate.'"

The lawyer looked up from his reading.

"That again, Mr. Smith, is contingent upon certain matters."

T. B. smiled.

"I quite understand that," he said, drily, "though possibly you don't,"
he added under his breath.

This was a portion of the will about which he knew nothing for the
document had been executed but a few days before the tragedy which had
deprived the world of Gregory Farrington. There were a few more
paragraphs to read; certain jewelleries had been left to his dear friend
Count Ernesto Poltavo, and the reading was finished.

"I have only to say now," said the lawyer, as he carefully folded his
glasses and put them away in his pocket, "that there is a very
considerable sum of money at Mr. Farrington's bank. It will be for the
courts to decide in how so far that money is to be applied to the
liquidation of debts incurred by the deceased as director of a public
company. That is to say, that it will be a question for the supreme
judicature whether the private fortune of the late Mr. Farrington will
be seized to satisfy his other creditors."

There was a haze and a babble of talk. Poltavo crossed with quick steps
to the lawyer, and for a moment they were engaged in quick conversation;
then suddenly the adventurer turned and left the room. T. B. had seen
the move and followed with rapid steps. He overtook the Count in the
open doorway of the house.

"A word with you, Count," he said, and they descended the steps together
into the street. "The will was rather a surprise to you?"

Count Poltavo was now all smooth equanimity. You might not have thought
from his smooth face and his smile, and his gentle drawling tone, that
he had been affected by the reading of this strange document.

"It is a surprise, I confess," he said. "I do not understand my friend
Farrington's action in regard to----" he hesitated.

"In regard to Miss Gray," smiled T. B.

Of a sudden the self-control of the man left him, and he turned with a
snarling voice on the detective, but his wrath was not directed toward
the cool man who stood before him.

"The treacherous dog!" he hissed, "to do this--to me. But it shall not
be, it shall not be, I tell you; this woman is more to me than you can
imagine." He struck his breast violently. "Can I speak with you
privately?"

"I thought you might wish to," said T. B.

He lifted his hand and made an almost imperceptible signal, and a
taxicab which had stood on the opposite side of the road, and followed
them slowly as they walked along Brakely Square, suddenly developed
symptoms of activity, and came whirring across the road to the sidewalk.

T. B. opened the door and Poltavo stepped in, the detective following.
There was no need to give any instructions, and without any further
order the cab whirled its way through the West End until it came to the
arched entrance of Scotland Yard, and there the man alighted. By the
time they had reached T. B.'s room, Poltavo had regained something of
his self-possession. He walked up and down the room, his hands thrust
into his pockets, his head sunk upon his breast.

"Now," said T. B., seating himself at his desk, "what would you like to
say?"

"There is much I would like to say," said Poltavo, quietly, "and I am
now considering whether it will be in my interest to tell all at this
moment or whether it would be best that I should maintain my silence
longer."

"Your silence in regard to Farrington I presume you are referring to,"
suggested T. B. Smith easily; "perhaps I can assist you a little to
unburden your mind."

"I think not," said Poltavo, quickly; "you cannot know as much about
this man as I. I had intended," he said, frankly, "to tell you much that
would have surprised you; at present it is advisable that I should wait
for one or two days in order that I may give some interested people an
opportunity of undoing a great deal of mischief which they have done. I
must go to Paris at once."

T. B. said nothing; there was no purpose to be served in hastening the
issue at this particular moment. The man had recovered his
self-possession, he would talk later, and T. B. was content to wait, and
for the moment to entertain his unexpected guest.

"It is a strange place," said the Count calmly, scrutinizing the room;
"this is Scotland Yard! The Great Scotland Yard! of which all criminals
stand in terror, even with which our local criminals in Poland have some
acquaintance."

"It is indeed a strange place," said T. B. "Shall I show you the
strangest place of all?"

"I should be delighted," said the other.

T. B. led the way along the corridor, rang for the lift, and they were
shot up to the third floor. Here at the end of a long passage, was a
large room, in which row after row of cabinets were methodically
arrayed.

"This is our record department," said T. B.; "it will have a special
interest for you, Count Poltavo."

"Why for me?" asked the other, with a smile.

"Because I take it you are interested in the study of criminal
detection," replied T. B. easily.

He walked aimlessly along one extensive row of drawers, and suddenly
came to a halt.

"Here, for instance, is a record of a remarkable man," he said. He
pulled open a drawer unerringly, ran his fingers along the top of a
batch of envelopes and selected one. He nodded the Count to a polished
table near the window, and pulled up two chairs.

"Sit down," he said, "and I will introduce you to one of the minor
masters of the criminal world."

Count Poltavo was an interested man as T. B. opened the envelope and
took out two plain folders, and laid them on the table.

He opened the first of these; the photograph of a military-looking man
in Russian uniform lay upon the top. Poltavo saw it, gasped, and looked
up, his face livid.

"That was the Military Governor of Poland," said T. B., easily; "he was
assassinated by one who posed as his son many years ago."

The Count had risen quickly, and stood shaking from head to foot, his
trembling hand at his mouth.

"I have never seen him," he muttered. "I think your record office is
very close--you have no ventilation."

"Wait a little," said T. B., and he turned to the second dossier.

Presently he extracted another photograph, the photograph of a young
man, a singularly good-looking youth, and laid it on the table by the
side of the other picture.

"Do you know this gentleman?" asked T. B.

There was no reply.

"It is the photograph of the murderer," the detective went on, "and
unfortunately this was not his only crime. You will observe there are
two distinct folders, each filled with particulars of our young friend's
progress along the path which leads to the gallows."

He sorted out another photograph. It was a beautiful girl in a Russian
peasant costume; evidently the portrait of some one taken at a fancy
dress ball, because both the refined face and the figure of the girl
were inconsistent with the costume.

"That is the Princess Lydia Bontasky," said T. B., "one of the victims
of our young friend's treachery. Here is another."

The face of the fourth photograph was plain, and marked with sorrow.

"She was shot at Kieff by our young and high-spirited friend, and died
of her wounds. Here are particulars of a bank robbery organized five
years ago by a number of people who called themselves anarchists, but
who were in reality very commonplace, conventional thieves unpossessed
of any respect for human life. But I see this does not interest you."

He closed the dossier and put it back into its envelope, before he
looked up at the Count's face. The man was pale now, with a waxen pallor
of death.

"They are very interesting," he muttered.

He stumbled rather than walked the length of the room, and he had not
recovered when they reached the corridor.

"This is the way out," said T. B., as he indicated the broad stairs. "I
advise you, Count Poltavo, to step warily. It will be my duty to inform
the Russian police that you are at present in this country. Whether they
move or do not move is a problematical matter. Your fellow-countrymen
are not specially energetic where crimes of five years' standing are
concerned. But this I warn you,"--he dropped his hand upon the other's
shoulder,--"that if you stand in my way I shall give you trouble which
will have much more serious consequences for you."

Three minutes later Poltavo walked out of Scotland Yard like a man in a
dream. He hailed the first cab that came past and drove back to his
flat. He was there for ten minutes and emerged with a handbag.

He drove to the Grand Marylebone Hotel, and detective inspector Ela, who
had watched his every movement, followed in another taxi. He waited
until he saw Poltavo enter the hotel, then the officer descended some
distance from the door, and walked nonchalantly to the entrance.

There was no sign of Poltavo.

Ela strolled carelessly through the corridor, and down into the big palm
court. From the palm court another entrance led into the Marylebone
Road. Ela quickened his steps, went through the big swing doors to the
vestibule.

Yes, the porter on duty had seen the gentleman; he had called a taxi and
gone a few minutes before.

Ela cursed himself for his folly in letting the man out of his sight.

He reported the result of his shadowing to T. B. Smith over the
telephone, and T. B. was frankly uncomplimentary.

"However, I think I know where we will pick him up," he said. "Meet me
at Waterloo; we must catch the 6:15 to Great Bradley."




CHAPTER XI


"You want to see Mr. Moole?" Dr. Fall asked the visitor.

"I wish to see Mr. Moole," replied Poltavo. He stood at the door of the
Secret House, and after a brief scrutiny the big-faced doctor admitted
him, closing the door behind him.

"Tell me, what do you want?" he asked. He had seen the curious gesture
that Poltavo had made--the pass sign which had unbarred the entrance to
many strange people.

"I want to see Farrington!" replied Poltavo, coolly.

"Farrington!" Fall's brow knit in a puzzled frown.

"Farrington," repeated Poltavo, impatiently. "Do not let us have any of
this nonsense, Fall. I want to see him on a matter of urgency. I am
Poltavo."

"I know just who you are," said Fall, calmly, "but why you should come
here under the impression that the late Mr. Farrington is an inmate of
this establishment I do not understand. We are a lunatic asylum, not a
mortuary," he said, with heavy humour.

Still, he led the way upstairs to the drawing-room on the first floor.

"What is the trouble?" he asked, as he closed the door behind him.

Poltavo chose to tell the story of his identification by T. B. Smith
rather than the real object of his journey. Fall listened in silence.

"I doubt very much whether he will see you," he said: "he is in his
worst mood. However, I will go along and find out what his wishes are."

He was absent for ten minutes, and when he returned he beckoned to the
visitor.

Poltavo followed him up the stairs till he came to the room in which the
bedridden Mr. Moole lay.

A man turned as the two visitors came in--it was Farrington in the life,
Farrington as he had seen him on the night of his disappearance from the
box at the Jollity. The big man nodded curtly.

"Why have you come down here," he asked, harshly, "leading half the
detectives in London to me?"

"I do not think you need bother about half the detectives in London,"
said Poltavo. He looked at Fall. "I want to see you alone," he said.

Farrington nodded his head and the other departed, closing the door
behind him.

"Now," said Poltavo,--he crossed the room with two strides,--"I want to
know what you mean--you treacherous dog--by this infernal will of
yours!"

"You can sit down," said Farrington, coolly, "and you can learn right
now, Poltavo, that I do not stand for any man questioning me as to why I
should do this or that, and I certainly do not stand for any human being
in the world speaking to me as you are doing."

"You know that you are in my power," said Poltavo, viciously. "Are you
aware that I could raise my finger and tumble your precious plot into
the dust?"

"There are many things I know," said Farrington, "and if you knew them
too you would keep a civil tongue in your head. Sit down. What is the
trouble?"

"Why did you leave that instruction in your will? That Doris was to
marry this infernal Doughton?"

"For a very good reason."

"Explain the reason!" stormed the angry man.

"I shall do nothing so absurd," smiled Farrington, crookedly; "it is
enough when I say I want this girl's happiness. Don't you realize," he
went on rapidly, "that the only thing I have in my life, that is at all
clean, or precious, or worth while, is my affection for my niece? I want
to see her happy; I know that her happiness lies with Doughton."

"You are mad," snarled the other; "the girl is half in love with me."

"With you," Farrington's eyes narrowed; "that is absolutely impossible."

"Why impossible?" demanded Poltavo loudly; "why impossible?" He thumped
the table angrily.

"For many reasons," said Farrington. "First, because you are unworthy to
be her under-gardener, much less her husband. You are, forgive my
frankness, a blackguard, a thief, a murderer, a forger and a bank
robber, so far as I know." He smiled. "Yes, I was an interested listener
to your conversation with Fall. I have all sorts of weird instruments
here by which I can pick up unguarded items of talk, but fortunately I
have no need to be informed on this subject. I have as complete a record
of your past as our friend Smith, and I tell you, Poltavo, that whilst I
am willing that you shall be my agent, and that you shall profit
enormously by working hand in hand with me, I would sooner see myself
dead than I should hand Doris over to your tender mercies."

An ugly smile played about the lips of Poltavo.

"That is your last word?" he asked.

"That is my last word," said Farrington; "if you will be advised by me,
you will let the matter stand where it is. Leave things as they are,
Poltavo. You are on the way to making a huge fortune; do not let this
absurd sentiment, or this equally absurd ambition of yours, step in and
spoil everything."

"And whatever happens you would never allow Doris to marry me?"

"That is exactly what I meant, and exactly what I still say," said
Farrington, firmly.

"But, suppose,"--Poltavo's hands caressed his little moustache, and he
was smiling wickedly,--"suppose I force your hand?"

Farrington's eyebrows rose. "How?" he demanded.

"Suppose I take advantage of the fact that Miss Doris Gray, an
impressionable young English girl, receptive to sympathetic admiration
and half in love with me--suppose, I say, I took advantage of this fact,
and we marry in the face of your will?"

"You would be sorry," said Farrington, grimly; "you may be sorry that
you even threatened as much."

"I not only threaten," snarled Poltavo, "but I will carry out my threat,
and you interfere with me at your peril!" He shook his clenched fist in
Farrington's face. The elder man looked at him with a long, earnest
glance in which his keen eyes seemed to search the very soul of the
Russian.

"I wish this had not happened," he said, half to himself. "I had hoped
that there was the making of a useful man in you, Poltavo, but I have
been mistaken. I never thought that sentiment would creep in. Is it
money--her fortune?" he asked, suddenly.

Poltavo shook his head.

"Curse the money," he said, roughly; "I want the girl. I tell you,
Farrington, every day she grows more precious and more desirable to me."

"Other women have become precious and desirable to you," said Farrington
in a low, passionate voice, "and they have enjoyed the fleeting
happiness of your favour for--how long? Just as long as you wanted,
Poltavo, and when you have been satisfied and sated yourself with joy,
you have cast them out as they had been nothing to you. I know your
record, my man," he said. "All that I want now is to assure myself that
you are in earnest, because if you are----" He paused.

"If I am----?" sneered Poltavo.

"You will not leave this house alive," said Farrington.

He said it in a matter-of-fact tone, and the full significance of his
speech did not dawn upon the Russian until long after he had said it.

For the space of a second or two his lips were smiling, and then the
smile suddenly froze. His hand went back to his hip pocket and
reappeared, holding a long-barrelled automatic pistol.

"Don't you try any of your tricks on me," he breathed. "I am quite
prepared for all eventualities, Mr. Farrington; you make a mistake to
threaten me."

"Not such a mistake as you have made," smiled Farrington. "You may fire
your pistol to see if it will go off. My own impression is that the
magazine has been removed."

One glance at the weapon was sufficient to demonstrate to the other that
the man had spoken the truth. He went deathly white.

"Look here," he said, genially, "let us make an end to this absurd
breach of friendship. I have come down to see what I can do for you."

"You have come down now to force me to grant your wishes regarding
Doris," said Farrington. "I think the matter had better end." He pressed
the bell, and Fall came in after a few moments' interval.

"Give the Count some refreshment before he goes," he said; "he is going
to London."

The very matter-of-factness of the instructions reassured Count Poltavo,
who for one moment had stood in a panic of fear; there was that in this
big silent house which terrified him. And with the removal of this fear
his insolent assurance returned. He stood in the doorway.

"You have made up your mind about Doris?" he said.

"Absolutely," said Farrington.

"Very good," said Poltavo.

He followed Fall along the corridor, and the doctor opened a small door
and illuminated a tiny lift inside, and Poltavo stepped in. As he did so
the door clicked.

"How do I work this lift?" he asked through the ornamental ironwork of
the doorway.

"I work it from outside," said Dr. Fall, cheerfully, and pressed a
button. The lift sank. It passed one steel door--that was the first
floor; and another--that was the ground floor, but still the lift did
not stop. It went on falling slowly, evenly, without jar or haste, and
suddenly it came to a stop before a door made of a number of thin steel
bars placed horizontally. As the lift stopped, the steel-barred doorway
opened noiselessly. All Poltavo's senses were now alert; he, a past
master in the art of treachery, had been at last its victim. He did not
leave the tiny lift for a moment, but prepared for eventualities. He
took a pencil out of his pocket and wrote rapidly on the wooden
panelling of the elevator, and then he stepped out into the
semi-darkness. He saw a large apartment, a bed and chair, and above a
large table one dim light. A number of switches on the wall facing him
promised further illumination. Anyway, if the worst came to the worst,
he could find a way by the lift well to safety again. He searched his
pockets with feverish haste. He usually carried one or two pistol
cartridges in case of necessity, and he was rewarded, for, in his top
waistcoat pocket, he discovered two nickel-pointed shapes. Hastily he
removed the dummy magazine from the butt of his pistol. The removal of
the magazine must have been effected by his servant, and the servant,
now he came to give the matter consideration, was possibly in the pay of
Farrington, and had probably warned the occupants of the Secret House of
Poltavo's departure.

It was but natural that the big man would take no chances, and Poltavo
cursed himself for a fool for allowing himself to be lured into a sense
of security. He stepped out of the lift; there was enough light to guide
him across the room. He reached the switchboard and pulled one of the
little levers. Three lights appeared at the far end of the room; he
pulled over the rest and the room was brilliantly illuminated.

It was an underground chamber, with red, distempered walls, artistically
furnished. The small bed in the corner was of brass; the air was
conveyed to his gloomy chamber by means of ventilators placed at
intervals in the wall.

Not an uncomfortable prison, thought Poltavo. He was making his
inspection when he heard a clang, and swung round. The steel door of the
lift had closed and he reached it just in time to see the floor of the
little cage ascending out of sight. He cursed himself again for his
insensate folly; he might have fixed the door with a chair; it was an
elementary precaution to take, but he had not realized the possibilities
of this house of mystery.

Perhaps the chairs were fixed. He tried them, but found he was mistaken,
except in one case. The great chair at the head of the table, solid and
heavy, was immovable, for it was clamped to the floor.

In one corner was a framework, and he guessed it to be the slide in
which the small provision lift ran.

His surmise was accurate, for even while he was examining it, a trap
opened in the ceiling, and there slid down noiselessly between the oiled
grids a tiny platform on which was a tray filled with covered dishes. He
lifted the viands from the little elevator to the table and inspected
them. There was a note written in pencil.

"You need have no fear in consuming the food we provide for you," it
ran. "Dr. Fall will personally vouch for its purity, and will, if
necessary, sample it in your presence. If you should need attendance you
will find a small bell fixed on the under side of the table."

Poltavo looked at the dinner. He was ravenously hungry; he must take the
chance of poison; after all, these people had him so completely in their
power that there was no necessity to take any precaution so far as his
food was concerned. He attacked an excellent dinner without discomfort
to himself, and when he had finished he bethought himself of the bell,
and finding it under the edge of the table, he pressed the button. He
had not long to wait; he heard the faint hum of machinery and walked
across to the barred gate of the lift, his pistol ready. He waited, his
eyes fixed up at the black square through which he expected the lift to
sink, and heard himself suddenly called by name.

He turned; Doctor Fall was standing in the centre of the room. By what
means he had arrived there was no evidence to show.

"I hope I did not surprise you," said the doctor, with his quiet smile;
"I did not come the way you expected. There are three entrances to this
room, and they are all equally difficult to negotiate."

"May I inquire the meaning of this outrage?" asked Poltavo.

"Your virtuous indignation does you credit, Count," said the doctor. He
sat down by the table, took a cigar-case from his pocket, and offered it
to his unwilling guest.

"You do not smoke; I am sorry. Would you like a cigarette?"

"Thank you, I have all the cigarettes I require," said Poltavo, briefly.

The doctor did not speak until he had leisurely bitten off the end of a
cigar and lit it.

"As I say," he went on, "I admire your _sang froid_. The word 'outrage'
comes curiously from you, Count, but I am merely carrying out Mr.
Farrington's wishes, when I say that I am perfectly willing to explain
your present unhappy position. In some way you have made our friend very
angry," he went on, easily; "and at present he is disposed to treat you
with considerable harshness, to mete out the same harsh justice, in
fact, that he accorded to two of the people who were engaged in the
building of this house, and who were predisposed to blackmail him with a
threat of betrayal."

"I knew nothing of these," said Poltavo.

"Then you are one of the few people in London who do not," said Dr.
Fall, with a smile. "One was an architect, the other a fairly efficient
man of a type you will find on the continent of Europe, and who will be
an electrician's assistant or a waiter with equal felicity. These men
were engaged to assist in the construction of the house, they were
brought from Italy with a number of other workmen, and entrusted with a
section of its completion. Not satisfied with the handsome pay they
received for their workmanship, they instituted a system of blackmail
which culminated one night at Brakely Square in their untimely death."

"Did Farrington kill them?" gasped Poltavo.

"I will not go so far as to say that," said the suave secretary; "I only
say that they died. Unfortunately for them, they were acting
independently of one another and quarrelled violently when they found
that they had both come upon a similar errand, having at last identified
the mysterious gentleman, who had commissioned the house, with Gregory
Farrington, a worthy and blackmailable millionaire."

"So that was it," said Poltavo, thoughtfully.

"What a fool I was not to understand, not to see the connection. They
were shot dead outside Farrington's house. Who else could have committed
the crime but he?"

"Again, I will not go so far as to say that," repeated the secretary; "I
merely remark that the men died a most untimely death, as a result of
their eagerness to extract advantages from Mr. Farrington, which he was
not prepared to offer. You, Count Poltavo, are in some danger of sharing
the same fate."

"I have been in tighter holes than this," smiled Poltavo, but he was
uneasy.

"Do not boast," said the doctor quietly. "I doubt very much whether in
your life you have been in so tight a hole as you are in now. We are
quite prepared to kill you; I tell you that much, because Mr. Farrington
does not ordinarily take risks. In your case, however, he is prepared,
just so long as you are impressed with his power to punish, to give you
one chance of life. Whether you take that chance or not entirely depends
upon yourself. He will not extract any oaths or promises or pledges of
any kind; he will release you with the assurance that if you will serve
him you will be handsomely rewarded, and if you fail him you will be
most handsomely killed; do I make myself clear?"

"Very," said Poltavo, and the hand that raised the cigarette to his lips
trembled a little.

"I would like to add," began the doctor, when the shrill sound of a
ringing bell rang through the vaulted apartment. Fall sprang up, walked
quietly to the wall, and placed his ear against a portion which appeared
to be no different to any other, but which, as Poltavo gathered,
concealed a hidden telephone.

"Yes?" he asked. He listened. "Very good," he said.

He turned to Poltavo, and surveyed him gravely.

"You will be interested to learn," he said, "that the house is entirely
surrounded by police. You have evidently been followed here."

A light sprang into Poltavo's eyes.

"That is very awkward for you," he said, with a laugh.

"More awkward for you, I think," said Doctor Fall, walking slowly to
the farthermost wall of the room.

"Stop!" said Poltavo.

The doctor turned. He was covered by the black barrel of Poltavo's
pistol.

"I beg to assure you," said the Count mockingly, "that this pistol is
loaded with two small cartridges which I found in my waistcoat pocket,
and which I usually carry in case of emergency. There is at any rate
sufficient----"

He said no more, for suddenly the room was plunged in darkness, the
lights were extinguished by an unseen hand as at some signal, and a
mocking laugh came back to him from where Fall had stood.

"Shoot!" said the voice, but the two cartridges were too precious for
Poltavo to take any risks in the dark. He stood waiting, suddenly heard
a click, and then the lights came up again. He was alone in the room. He
shrugged his shoulders; there was nothing to do but wait.

If T. B. Smith had followed him here, and if he had taken the drastic
step of surrounding the house with police, there was hope that he might
be rescued from his present unhappy plight. If not, he had the promise
which Farrington had given of his release on terms.

He heard the whirr of the descending lift; this time it was the
elevator by which he himself had descended. It came to a halt at the
floor level and the steel gates swung open invitingly. He must take his
chance; anyway, anything was better than remaining in this underground
room.

He stepped into the lift and pulled the gates close after him. To his
surprise they answered readily, and as the lock snapped the lift went
upwards slowly. Two overhanging electric lamps illuminated the little
elevator. They were dangerous to him. With the steel barrel of his
pistol he smashed the bulbs and crouched down in the darkness, his
finger on the trigger, ready for any emergency.

T. B. Smith was standing in the hall, and behind him three hard-featured
men from the Yard. Before him was Dr. Fall, imperturbable and obeying as
ever.

"You are perfectly at liberty to search the house," he was saying, "and,
as far as Count Poltavo is concerned, there is no mystery whatever. He
is one of the people who have been attracted here by curiosity, and at
the present moment he is inspecting the wonders of our beautiful
establishment."

There was something of truth in his ironic tone, and T. B. was puzzled.

"Will you kindly produce Count Poltavo?"

"With pleasure," said the secretary.

It was at that moment that the lift door opened and Poltavo stepped out,
pistol in hand.

He saw the group and took in its significance. He had now to decide in
that moment with whom he should run. His mind was made up quickly; he
knew he had no friends in the police force; whatever prosperity awaited
him must come from Farrington and his influence.

"An interesting weapon you have in your hand, Count," drawled T. B. "Do
I understand that you have been inspecting the art treasures of the
Secret House in some fear of your life?"

"Not at all," said Poltavo, as he slipped the pistol into his pocket. "I
have merely been engaged in a little pistol practice in the underground
shooting gallery; it is an interesting place; you should see it."

Dr. Fall's eyes did not leave the face of his late prisoner, and Poltavo
saw an approving gleam in the dark eyes.

"I should not, ordinarily, take the trouble to inspect your shooting
gallery," said T. B. Smith with a smile, "because I know that you are
not speaking the exact truth, Count Poltavo. My own impression is that
you have every reason to be thankful for my arrival. In the present
circumstances, perhaps, it would be advisable to look over a portion of
your domain which, so far, has escaped my inspection."

The doctor shrugged his shoulders.

"It is hardly a shooting gallery, but since it is so far removed from
the living portion of the house we sometimes use it for that purpose,"
he said. "I have not the slightest objection to your descending."

T. B. entered the lift. It was in darkness, as a result of Poltavo's
precautions.

"I will go alone," said T. B., and Fall, with a little bow, closed the
gates, and the lift descended.

They waited some time; Fall had the power, from where he was, of closing
the gates below and bringing the lift up again. This Poltavo knew to his
cost, but there were good reasons why the doctor should not exercise his
knowledge, and in a few minutes the lift came back to its original
position and T. B. stepped out.

"Thank you, I have learned all I want to know," he said with a keen
glance at Poltavo. "Really, you have an extraordinary house, Dr. Fall."

"It is always open to your inspection," said the doctor, with a heavy
smile.

T. B. was fingering the little electric lamp, which he carried in his
hand, in an absent-minded manner. Presently he put it into his pocket,
and, with a nod to his host, walked across the hall. He turned suddenly
and addressed Poltavo.

"When you were trapped in this house," he said, quietly, "and expected
considerable trouble in escaping from the trap, you took the precaution,
like the careful man that you are, of inscribing a message which might
aid those who came to your relief. This message has now served its
purpose," he smiled, as he saw the look of consternation on Poltavo's
face, "and you will be well advised to invite your friend to wipe it
out"; and with another nod he passed from the house, followed by his
three men.

"What does this mean?" asked Fall, quickly.

"I--I--" stammered Poltavo, flustered for once in his life, "wrote on
the side of the lift a few words only, nothing incriminating, my dear
doctor, just a line to say that I was imprisoned below."

With a curse Fall dashed into the little elevator.

"Bring a light," he said, and struck a match to read the scrawl which
Poltavo had written. Fortunately there was nothing in it which betrayed
the great secret of the house, but it was enough, as he realized, to
awaken the dormant suspicion, even supposing it was dormant, of this
indefatigable detective.

"You have made a nice mess of things," he said to Poltavo, sternly; "see
that you do not make a greater. We will forgive you once, but the second
attempt will be fatal."




CHAPTER XII


The distant chime of Little Bradley church had struck one o'clock, when
T. B. Smith stepped from the shadow of the hedge on the east side of the
Secret House, and walked slowly toward the road. Two men, crouched in
the darkness, rose silently to meet him.

"I think I have found a place," said T. B., in a low voice. "As I
thought, there are electric alarms on the top of the walls, and electric
wires threaded through all the hedges. There is a break, however, where,
I think, I can circumvent the alarm."

He led the way back to the place from which he had been making his
reconnaissance.

"Here it is," said T. B.

He touched a thin twine-like wire with his finger. The third man put the
concentrated ray of an electric lamp upon it.

"I can make another circuit for this," he said, and pulled a length of
wire from his pocket. Two minutes later, thanks to quick manipulation of
his wire, they were able to step in safety across the wall and drop
noiselessly into the grounds.

"We shall find a man on duty," whispered T. B.; "he is patrolling the
house, and I have an idea that there are trip-wires on the lawn."

He had fixed a funnel-like arrangement to the head of his lamp, and now
he carefully scrutinized the ground as he walked forward. The funnel was
so fixed that it showed no light save on the actual patch of ground he
was surveying.

"Here is one," he said, suddenly.

The party stepped cautiously over the almost invisible line of wire,
supported a few inches from the ground by steel uprights, placed at
regular intervals.

"They fix these every night after sunset; I have watched them doing it,"
said T. B. "There is another line nearer the house."

They found this, too, and carefully negotiated it.

"Down!" whispered T. B. suddenly, and the party sank flat on the turf.

Ela for a moment could not see the cause for alarm, but presently he
discerned the slow moving figure of the sentry as it passed between
them and the house. The man was walking leisurely along, and even in the
starlight they could see the short rifle slung at his shoulder. They
waited until he had disappeared round the corner of the house, and then
crossed the remaining space of lawn. T. B. had been carrying a little
canvas bag, and now he put his hand inside and withdrew by the ears a
struggling rabbit.

"Little friend," he whispered, "You must be sacrificed in the cause of
scientific criminal investigation."

He mounted the steps which led to the entrance hall. The steel-beaded
curtain still hung before the door almost brushing the mat as he had
seen it. He released the rabbit, and the startled beast, after a vain
attempt to escape back to the lawn, went with hesitating hop on to the
mat, and then, at a threatening gesture from T. B., pushed his nose to
the hanging curtain to penetrate his way to safety. Instantly as he
touched it there was a quick flicker of blue light, and the unfortunate
animal was hurled back past T. B. to the gravel path below. The
detective descended hastily and picked it up. It was quite dead. He felt
the singed hair about its head, and murmured a sympathetic "vale."

"As I suspected," he said in a low voice, "an electric death-trap for
anybody trying to get into the house that way. Now, Johnson."

The third man was busy pulling out a pair of rubber boots; he took from
his pocket a pair of thick rubber gloves, and made his way with
confidence up the steps. He leant down and tried to pull the mat from
its place, but that was impossible. He gathered up the beads cautiously
with his hands; he was free, by reason of his boots and his
hand-covering, from the danger of a shock, but he took good care that no
portion of the curtain touched any other part of his body. Very
cautiously he drew the bead "chick" aside, looping it back by means of
strong rubber bands, and then T. B. went forward. In the meantime he had
followed the other's example, and had drawn stout rubber goloshes over
his feet and had put on gloves of a similar material. The lock that he
had noticed earlier in the day was of a commonplace type; the only
danger was that the inmates had taken the precaution of bolting or
chaining the door, but apparently they were content with the protection
which their electric curtain might reasonably be expected to afford. The
door opened after a brief manipulation of keys, and T. B. stepped into
the hall. He listened, all his senses strained, for the sound of a
warning bell, but none came. Ela and the other man followed.

"Better remain in the hall," said T. B. "We shall have to chance the
guard not noticing what has happened to the curtain, anyway; perhaps he
will not be round for some time," he added, hopefully.

They made a quick scrutiny of the hall, and found no indication of
cables or of wires which would suggest that an alarm had been fixed. T.
B. stole carefully up the stairs, leaving the two men to guard the hall
below. At every landing he halted, and listened, but the house was
wrapped in silence, and he searched the third floor without mishap.

He recognized the corridor, having taken very careful note of certain
peculiarities, and a scratch on the side of the lift door, which he had
mentally noted for future reference, showed him he was on the right
track.

Unerringly and swiftly he passed along the passage till he came to the
big rosewood doors which opened upon the invalid's bedroom. He turned
the handle gently, it yielded, and he stepped noiselessly through the
door, and pushed the inner door cautiously. The room was dimly
illuminated, evidently by a night light, thought T. B., and he pressed
the door farther open that he might secure a better view of the
apartment, and then he gasped, for this was not the room he had been in
before.

It was a sumptuously arranged bureau, panelled in rosewood, and set
about with costly furniture. A man was sitting at the desk, busily
writing by the light of a table lamp; his back was toward T. B. The
detective pushed the door farther open, and suddenly the man at the desk
leapt up, and turning round, confronted the midnight visitor.

T. B. had only time to see that his face was hidden behind a black mask
which extended from his forehead to his chin. As soon as he saw T. B.
standing in the doorway, he reached out his hand. Instantly the room was
in darkness, and the door, which T. B. was holding ajar, was suddenly
forced back as if by an irresistible power, flinging the detective into
the corridor, which almost simultaneously was flooded with light. T. B.
turned to meet the smiling face of Dr. Fall.

The big man, with his white, expressionless countenance, was regarding
him gravely, and with amused resentment.

Where he had come from T. B. could only conjecture; he had appeared as
if by magic and was fully dressed.

"To what do I owe the honour of this visit, Mr. Smith?" he said, in his
dry, grim way.

"A spirit of curiosity," said T. B., coolly. "I was anxious to secure
another peep at your Mr. Moole."

"And how did he look?" asked the other, with a faint smile.

"Unfortunately," said T. B., "I have mistaken the floor, and instead of
seeing our friend, I have unexpectedly and quite unwittingly interrupted
a gentleman who, for reasons best known to himself, has hidden his
face."

Dr. Fall frowned.

"I do not quite follow you," he said.

"Perhaps if I were to follow you back to the room," said T. B.
good-humouredly, "you might understand better."

He heard a strange wailing sound and a shivering motion beneath his
feet, as though a heavy traction engine were passing close to the house.

"What is that?" he asked.

"It is one of the unpleasant consequences of building one's house over a
disused coal-mine," said the doctor easily; "but as regards your strange
hallucination," he went on, "I should rather like to disabuse your mind
of your fantastic vision."

He walked slowly back to the room which T. B. had quitted, and the
inner door yielded to his touch. It was in darkness. Dr. Fall put his
hand inside the room and there was a click of a switch.

"Come in," he said, and T. B. stepped into the room.

It was the room he had left in the earlier part of the day. There was
the blue square of carpet and the silver bedstead, and the same yellow
face and unwinking eyes of the patient. The walls were panelled in
myrtle, the same electrolier hung from the ceiling as he had seen on his
previous visit. Smith gasped, and passed his hand over his forehead.

"You see," said the secretary, "you have been the victim of a peculiar
and unhappy trick of eyesight; in fact, Mr. Smith, may I suggest that
you have been dreaming?"

"You may suggest just what you like," said T. B. pleasantly. "I should
like to see the room below and the room above."

"With pleasure," said the other; "there is a storeroom up above which
you may see if you wish."

He led the way upstairs, unlocked the door of the room immediately over
that which they had just left, and entered. The room was bare, and the
plain deal floor, the distempered walls, and the high skylight showed it
to be just as the doctor had described, a typical storeroom.

"You do not seem to use it," said T. B.

"We are very tidy people," smiled the doctor; "and now you shall see the
room below."

As they went down the stairs again they heard the curious wail, and T.
B. experienced a tremulous jar which he had noted before.

"Unpleasant, is it not?" said Dr. Fall. "I was quite alarmed at that at
first, but it has no unpleasant consequences."

On the second floor he entered the third room, immediately below that in
which the sick Mr. Moole was lying. He unlocked this door and they
entered a well-furnished bedroom; on a more elaborate scale than that
which T. B. had seen before.

"This is our spare bedroom," said Dr. Fall, easily; "we seldom use it."

T. B. slipped into the apartment and made a quick scrutiny. There was
nothing of a suspicious character here.

"I hope you are satisfied now," said Dr. Fall as he led the way out,
"and that your two friends below are not growing impatient."

"You have seen them, then," said T. B.

"I have seen them," said the other gravely. "I saw them a few moments
after you entered the hall. You see, Mr. Smith," he went on, "we do not
employ anything so vulgar as bells to alarm us. When the entrance door
opens, a red light shows above my bed. Unfortunately, the moment you
came in I happened to be in an adjoining room at work. I had to go into
my bedroom to get a paper, when I saw the light. So, though I am perhaps
inaccurate in saying that I have been keeping you under observation from
the moment you arrived, there was little you did which was not
witnessed. I will show you, if you will be good enough to accompany me
to my room."

"I shall be delighted," said T. B.

He was curious to learn anything that the house or its custodian could
teach him. Dr. Fall's room was on the first floor, immediately over the
entrance hall, a plain office with a door leading to a cosily, though
comparatively expensively furnished bedroom. By the side of the doctor's
bed was a round pillar, which looked for all the world like one of those
conventional and useless articles of furniture which the suburban
housewife employs to balance a palm upon.

"Look down into that," said the doctor.

T. B. obeyed. It was quite hollow, and a little way down was what
appeared to be a square sheet of silver paper. It was unlike any other
silver paper because it appeared to be alive. He could see figures
standing against it, two figures that he had no difficulty in
recognizing as Ela and Johnson.

"It is a preparation of my own," said the doctor. "I thought of taking
out a patent for it. An adjustment of mirrors throws the image upon a
luminous screen which is so sensitive to light that it can record an
impression of your two friends even in the semi-darkness of the hall."

"Thank you," said T. B.

There was nothing to do but to accept his defeat as graciously as
possible. For baffled he was, caught at every turn, and puzzled,
moreover, by his extraordinary experience.

"You will find some difficulty in opening the door," said the pleasant
Doctor Fall.

"In that I think you are mistaken," smiled T. B.

The doctor stopped to switch on the light, and the two discomforted
detectives watched the scene curiously.

"We have left the door ajar."

"Still I think you will find a difficulty in getting out," insisted the
other. "Open the door."

Ela pulled at it, but it was impossible to move the heavy oaken panel.

"Electrically controlled," said the doctor; "and you can neither move it
one way nor the other. It is an ingenious idea of mine, for which I may
also apply for a patent one of these days."

He took a key from his pocket and inserted it in an almost invisible
hole in the oak panelling of the hall; instantly the door opened slowly.

"I wish you a very good night," said Doctor Fall, as they stood on the
steps. "I hope we shall meet again."

"You may be sure," said T. B. Smith, grimly, "that we shall."




CHAPTER XIII


Doris Gray was face to face with a dilemma. She stood in a tragic
position; even now, she could not be sure that her guardian was dead.
But dead or alive, he had left her a terrible problem, for terrible it
seemed to her, for solution.

She liked Frank Doughton well enough, but she was perhaps too young, had
too small a knowledge of the great elements of life to appreciate fully
her true feelings in the matter; and then the influence of this polished
man of the world, this Count of the Roman Empire as he described
himself, with his stories of foreign capitals, his easy conversation,
his acquaintance with all the niceties of social intercourse, had made a
profound impression upon her. At the moment, she might not say with any
certainty, whether she preferred the young Englishman or this suave man
of the world.

The balance was against Frank, and the command contained in the will,
the knowledge that she must, so she told herself, make something of a
sacrifice, was a subject for resentment. Not even the sweetest girl in
the world, obeying as she thought the command of a dead man, who was
especially fond and proud of her, could be compensated for the fact that
he had laid upon her his dead hands, charging her to obey a command
which might very easily be repugnant and hateful to her.

She did not, in truth, wish to marry anybody. She could well afford to
allow the question of her fortune to lapse; she had at least five years
in which to make up her mind, as to how she felt toward Frank Doughton.
She liked him, there was something especially invigorating and wholesome
in his presence and in his very attitude towards her. He was so
courteous, so kindly, so full of quick, strong sympathy and yet--there
were some depths he could not touch, she told herself, and was vague
herself as to what those depths were.

She was strolling in Green Park on a glorious April morning, in a
complacent mood, for the trees were in fresh green bud and the flower
beds were a blaze of colour, when she met Frank, and Frank was so
obviously exhilarated that something of his enthusiasm was conveyed to
her. He saw her before she had seen him, and came with quickening
footsteps toward her.

"I say," he said explosively, "I have some splendid news!"

"Let us sit down," she said, with a kindly smile, and made a place for
him by her side on a bench near by. "Now, what is this wonderful news?"

"You remember Mr. Farrington gave me a commission to find the missing
heir of Tollington?"

She nodded.

"Well, I have found him," he said, triumphantly; "it is an extraordinary
thing," he went on, "that I should have done so, because I am not a
detective. I told Mr. Farrington quite a long time ago that I never
expected to make any discovery which would be of any use to him. You see
Mr. Farrington was not able to give me any very definite data to work
on. It appears that old Tollington had a nephew, the son of his dead
sister, and it was to this nephew that his fortune was left.
Tollington's sister had been engaged to a wealthy Chicago stockbroker,
and the day before the wedding she had run away with an Englishman, with
whom her family was acquainted, but about whom they knew very little.
She guessed that he was a ne'er-do-well, who had come out to the States
to redeem his fallen fortune. But he was not a common adventurer
apparently, for he not only refused to communicate with the girl's
parents, although he knew they were tremendously wealthy, but he never
allowed them to know his real name. It appears that he was in Chicago
under a name which was not his own. From that moment they lost sight of
him. In a roundabout way they learned that he had gone back to England
and that he had by his own efforts and labours established himself
there. This news was afterwards confirmed. The girl was in the habit of
writing regularly to her parents, giving neither her surname nor
address. They answered through the columns of the London _Times_. That
is how, though they knew where she was situated, all efforts to get in
touch with her proved to be unavailing; and when her parents died, and
her brother renewed his search, he was met with a blank wall. You see,"
Frank went on, a little naïvely, "it is quite impossible to discover
anybody when their name is not even known to one."

"I see," smiled the girl; "and have you succeeded where all these people
have failed?"

"I have hardly progressed so far as that," he laughed. "What I have
discovered is this: that the man, who seventy years ago left the United
States with the sister of old Tollington, lived for some years in Great
Bradley."

"Great Bradley!" she said, in surprise; "why, isn't that where Lady
Constance Dex lives?"

He nodded.

"Everybody seems to live there," he said, ruefully; "even our friend,"
he hesitated.

"Our friend?" she repeated, inquiringly.

"Your friend Poltavo is there now," he said, "permanently established as
the guest of Dr. Fall. You have heard of the Secret House?--but
everybody in England has heard of it."

"I am afraid that everybody does not include me," she smiled, "but go on
with your story; how did you find that he lived in Great Bradley?"

"Well, it was rather a case of luck," he explained. "You see, I lived
some years in Great Bradley myself; that is where I first met your
uncle. I was a little boy at the time. But it wasn't my acquaintance
with Great Bradley which helped me. Did you see in the paper the other
day the fact that, in pulling down an old post office building, a number
of letters were discovered which had evidently slipped through the floor
of the old letter-box, and had not been delivered?"

"I read something about it," she smiled; "forty or fifty years old, were
they not?"

He nodded.

"One of these," he said, quietly, "was addressed to Tollington, and was
signed by his sister. I saw it this morning at the General Post Office.
I happened to spot the paragraph, which was sent in to my paper, to the
effect that these letters had been undelivered for forty or fifty years,
and fortunately our correspondent at Great Bradley had secured a list of
the addresses. I saw that one of these was to George Tollington of
Chicago, and on the off chance I went down to Great Bradley. Thanks to
the courtesy of the Postmaster-General I was able to copy the letter. It
was a short one."

He fumbled in his pocket and produced a sheet of paper.


"DEAR GEORGE," he read, "this is just to tell you that we are quite well
and prosperous. I saw your advertisement in the _Times_ newspaper and
was pleased to hear from you. Henry sends to you his kindest regards and
duties.

                        "Your loving sister,
                                         "ANNIE."


"Of course, it is not much to go on," he said apologetically, folding
the letter up and replacing it in his pocket. "I suppose Great Bradley
has had a constant procession of Annies, but at any rate it is
something."

"It is indeed," she smiled.

"It means quite a lot to me, or at least it did," he corrected himself.
"I had an arrangement with your uncle, which was approved by the other
trustees of the estate. It means a tremendous lot," he repeated. There
was some significance in his tone and she looked up to him quickly.

"In money?" she asked.

"In other things," he said, lowering his voice. "Doris, I have not had
an opportunity of saying how sorry I am about the will; it is hateful
that you should be forced by the wishes of your guardian to take a step
which may be unpleasant to you."

She coloured a little and turned her eyes away.

"I--I do not want to take advantage of that wish," he went on awkwardly.
"I want you to be happy. I want you to come to me for no other reason
than the only one that is worth while; that you have learned to care for
me as I care for you."

Still she made no response and he sighed heavily.

"Some day," he said, wistfully, "I had hoped to bring in my hands all
the material advantages which a man can offer to the woman he loves."

"And do you think that would make a difference?" she asked quickly.

"It would make this difference," he replied, in the same quiet tone,
"that you could not think of me as one who loved you for your fortune,
or one who hoped to gain anything from the marriage but the dearest,
sweetest woman in the world."

The eyes which she turned upon him were bright with unshed tears.

"I do not know how I feel, Frank," she said. "I am almost as much a
mystery to myself as I must be to you. I care for you in a way, but I am
not sure that I care for you as you would like me to."

"Is there anybody else?" he asked, after a pause.

She avoided his glance, and sat twining the cord of her sunshade about
her fingers.

"There is nobody else--definitely," she said.

"Or tentatively?" he insisted.

"There are always tentative people in life," she smiled, parrying his
question. "I think, Frank, you stand as great a chance as anybody." She
shrugged her shoulders. "I speak as though I were some wonderful prize
to be bestowed; I assure you I do not feel at all like that. I have a
very humble opinion of my own qualities. I do not think I have felt so
meek or so modest about my own qualities as I do just now."

He walked with her to the end of the park, and saw her into a taxicab,
standing on the pavement and watching as she was whirled into the
enveloping traffic, out of sight.

As for Doris Gray, she herself was suffering from some uneasiness of
mind. She needed a shock to make her realize one way or the other where
her affections lay. Poltavo loomed very largely; his face, his voice,
the very atmosphere which enveloped him, was constantly present with
her.

She reached Brakely Square and would have passed straight up to her
room, but the butler, with an air of importance, stopped her.

"I have a letter here, miss. It is very urgent. The messenger asked that
it should be placed in your hands at the earliest possible moment."

She took the letter from him. It was addressed to her in typewritten
characters. She stripped the envelope and found yet another inside. On
it was typewritten:


"Read this letter when you are absolutely alone. Lock the door and be
sure that nobody is near when you read it."


She raised her pretty eyebrows. What mystery was this? she asked. Still,
she was curious enough to carry out the request. She went straight to
her own room, opened the envelope, and took out a letter containing half
a dozen lines of writing.

She gasped, and went white, for she recognized the hand the moment her
eyes fell upon it. The letter she held in her shaking hand ran:


"I command you to marry Frank Doughton within seven days. My whole
fortune and my very life may depend upon this."


It was signed "Gregory Farrington," and heavily underlined beneath the
signature were the words, "Burn this, as you value my safety."

       *       *       *       *       *

T. B. Smith stepped briskly into the office of his chief and closed the
door behind him.

"What is the news?" asked Sir George, looking up.

"I can tell you all the news that I know," said T. B., "and a great deal
that I do not know, but only surmise."

"Let us hear the facts first and the romance afterwards," growled Sir
George, leaning back in his chair.

"Fact one," said T. B. drawing up a chair to the table, and ticking off
his fact on the first finger of his hand, "is that Gregory Farrington is
alive. The man whose body was picked up in the Thames is undoubtedly the
gentleman who was shot in the raid upon the Custom House. The inference
is, that Gregory was the second party in the raid, and that the attempt
to secure the trunk of the admirable Dr. Goldworthy was carefully
conceived. The box apparently contained a diary which gave away Gregory
to one who had it in her power to do him an immense amount of harm."

"You refer to Lady Constance Dex?" asked the chief, interestedly.

T. B. nodded.

"That is the lady," he said. "Evidently Farrington has played it pretty
low down upon her; was responsible for the death of her lover, and,
moreover, for a great deal of her unhappiness. Farrington was the man
who told George Doughton about some scandal of her youth, and Doughton,
that high-spirited man, went straight off to Africa without
communicating with the lady or discovering how far she was guilty in the
matter. The documents in the box would, I surmise, prove this to Lady
Dex's satisfaction, and Farrington, who was well informed through his
agents on the Coast, would have every reason for preventing these
letters getting into the hands of a woman who would be remorseless in
her vengeance."

"Is that fact established?" asked the chief.

"Pretty well," said T. B.

He took some papers out of his pocket and laid them on the desk before
him.

"I have now got a copy of the letter which the dead lover wrote to Lady
Constance. I need not say," he said lightly, "how I obtained possession
of this, but we in our department do not hesitate to adopt the most
drastic methods----"

"I know all about that," said the chief, with a little smile; "there was
burglary at the rectory two days ago, and I presume your interesting
burglar was your own Private Sikes."

"Exactly," said T. B. cheerfully. "Fact number two," he went on, "is
that Gregory Farrington and the international blackmailer named Montague
Fallock are one and the same person."

The chief looked up.

"You do not mean that?"

"I do indeed," said T. B. "That interesting paragraph in the will of the
late Mr. Farrington confirms this view. The will was especially prepared
to put me off the scent. Letters which have been received by eminent
personages signed 'Montague Fallock' and demanding, as usual, money with
threats of exposure have recently been received and confirm this
theory."

"Where is Montague Fallock now?"

"Montague Fallock is an inmate of the Secret House," said T. B.

"It seems pretty easy to take him, does it not?" asked Sir George, in
surprise. "Have you moved in the matter?"

T. B. shook his head.

"It is not so easy as you imagine," he said. "The Secret House contains
more secrets than we can at present unravel. It was built, evidently and
obviously, by a man of extraordinary mechanical genius as Farrington
was, and the primary object with which it was built was to enable him on
some future occasion to make his escape. I am perfectly certain that any
attempt to raid the house would result immediately in the bird flying.
We have got to wait patiently."

"What I cannot understand," said his chief, after awhile, "is why he
should make a dramatic exit from the world."

"That is the easiest of all to explain," smiled T. B. "He was scared; he
knew that I identified him with the missing Fallock; he knew, too, that
I strongly suspected him of the murder of the two men in Brakely Square.
Don't you see the whole thing fits together? He imported from various
places on the Continent, and at various periods, workmen of every kind
to complete the house at Great Bradley. Although he began his work
thirty years ago, the actual finishing touches have not been made until
within the last few years. Those finishing touches were the most
essential. I have discovered that the two men who were shot in Brakely
Square, were separately and individually employed in making certain
alterations to the house and installing certain machinery.

"One was a young architect, the other was a general utility man. They
were unknown to each other; each did his separate piece of work and was
sent back to his native land. By some mischance they succeeded in
discovering who their employer was, and they both arrived, unfortunately
for them, simultaneously at the door of Fallock or Farrington's house
with the object of blackmailing him. Farrington overheard the
conversation; he admitted as much.

"He stood at the door, saw them flourishing their pistols and thought it
was an excellent opportunity to rid himself of a very serious danger. He
shot them from the doorway, closed the doorway behind him, and returned
the revolver to its drawer in his study, and came down in time to meet
the policeman with energetic protestations of his terror. I smelt the
powder when I went into the house; there is no mistaking the smell of
cordite fired in so confined a place as the hallway of a house. And
Lady Dex was also there; she must have witnessed the shooting."

"Why did she come?" asked the chief.

"My conjecture is that she came either to confront Farrington with
evidence of his complicity, which is unlikely, or else to secure
confirmation of the story her lover told in his last letter."

"But why shouldn't Farrington disappear in an ordinary way--or why need
he disappear at all?" asked Sir George. "He had plenty of credit in the
city. He had the handling of his niece's fortune. He could have blocked
out your suspicion; he is not the kind of man to be scared of a little
thing like that."

"That is where I am at sea," said T. B. "I must confess his
disappearance is not consistent with his known character. He certainly
had the fortune of the girl, and I have no doubt in my mind that he has
a very genuine affection for his niece. Her inheritance, by the way,
falls due next month; I do not suppose that had anything to do with it.
If he had robbed her of it, or he had dissipated this money which was
left in his care, one could have understood it, but the fact that he is
dead will not restore the fortune if it is gone."

"What are you doing?" asked the chief.

"About Farrington?" asked T. B. "I am having the house kept under
observation, and I am taking whatever precautions I can to prevent our
friend from being scared. I am even attempting to lure him into the
open. Once I can catch him outside of the Secret House, I think he will
be a clever man to escape."

"And Poltavo?"

"He is in town," said T. B. "I think he will be a fairly easy man to
circumvent; he is obviously acting now as the agent of our friend
Farrington, and he is horribly proud of himself!"




CHAPTER XIV


As T. B. had said, Poltavo had returned from his brief sojourn in Great
Bradley, and emerged into society a new and more radiant being than ever
he had been before.

There had always been some doubt as to the Count's exact financial
position, and cautious hostesses had hesitated before they had invited
this plausible and polished man to their social functions. There were
whispers adverse as to his standing; there were even bold people who
called into question his right to employ the title which graced his
visiting cards. There were half a dozen Poltavos in the _Almanack De
Gotha_, any one of whom might have been Ernesto, for so vague is the
Polish hierarchy that it was impossible to fix him to any particular
family, and he himself answered careless inquiries with a cryptic smile
which might have meant anything.

But with his return to London, after his brief absence, there was no
excuse for any hostess, even the most sceptical, in refusing to admit
him to social equality on the ground of poverty. The very day he
returned he acquired the lease of a house in Burlington Gardens,
purchased two motor-cars, paying cash down for an early delivery, gave
orders left and right for the enrichment of his person and his domicile,
and in forty-eight hours had established himself in a certain mode of
living which suggested that he had never known any other.

He had had his lesson and had profited thereby. He had experienced an
unpleasant fright, though he might not admit it to Dr. Fall and his
master; it was nevertheless a fact that, realizing as he did that he had
stood face to face with a particularly unpleasant death, he had been
seized by a panic which had destroyed his ordinary equilibrium.

"You may trust me, my friend," he muttered to himself, as he sorted over
the papers on his brand-new desk in his brand-new study, in a house
which was still redolent of the painter's art and presence. "You may
trust me just so long as I find it convenient for you to trust me, but
you may be sure that never again will I give you the benefit of my
presence in the Secret House."

He had come back with a large sum of money to carry out his employer's
plans. There were a hundred agents through the country, particulars of
whom Poltavo now had in his possession. Innocent agents, and guilty
agents; agents in high places and active agents in the servants' hall.
Undoubtedly _Gossip's Corner_ was a useful institution.

Farrington had not made a great deal of money from its sale; indeed, as
often as not, it showed a dead loss every year. But he paid well for
contributions which were sent to him, and offered a price, which
exceeded the standard rate of pay, for such paragraphs as were
acceptable.

Men and women, with a malicious desire to score off some enemy, would
send him items which the newspapers would publish if they concerned
somebody who might not be bled. Many of these facts in an amended form
were, in fact, printed.

But more often than not the paragraphs and articles which came to the
unknown editor dealt with scandal which it was impossible to put into
print. Nevertheless, the informant would be rewarded. In some far-away
country home a treacherous servant would receive postal orders to his or
her great delight, but the news she or he had sent in their malice, a
tit-bit concerning some poor erring woman or some foolish man, would
never see the light of day, and the contributor might look in vain for
the spicy paragraph which had been composed with such labour.

The unfortunate subjects of domestic treachery would receive in a day or
two a letter from the mysterious Montague Fallock, retailing, to their
horror, those precious secrets which they had imagined none knew but
themselves. They would not associate the gossipy little rag, which
sometimes found its way to the servants' hall, with the magnificent
demand of this prince of blackmailers, and more often than not they
would pay to the utmost of their ability to avoid exposure.

It was not only the servants' hall which supplied Montague Fallock with
all the material for his dastardly work. There were men scarcely
deserving the name, and women lost to all sense of honour, who found in
this little journal means by which they could "come back" at those
favoured people who had offered them directly or indirectly some slight
offence. Sometimes the communication would reach the _Gossip_
anonymously, but if the facts retailed were sufficiently promising, one
of Fallock's investigators would be told off to discover how much truth
there was in it. A bland letter would follow, and the wretched victim
would emerge from the transaction the poorer in pocket and often in
health.

For this remorseless and ruthless man destroyed more than fortunes; he
trafficked in human lives. There had been half a dozen mysterious
suicides which had been investigated by Scotland Yard, and found
directly traceable to letters received in the morning, and burnt by the
despairing victim before his untimely and violent departure from life.

The office of the paper was situated at the top of a building in Fleet
Street; one back room comprised the whole of its editorial space, and
one dour man its entire staff. It was his duty to receive the
correspondence as it came and to convey it to the cloakroom of a London
station. An hour later it would be called for by a messenger and
transferred to another cloakroom. Eventually it would arrive in the
possession of the man who was responsible for the contents of the paper.
Many of these letters contained contributions in the ordinary way of
business, a story or two contributed by a more or less well-known
writer. Fallock, or Farrington, needed these outside contributions, not
only to give the newspaper a verisimilitude of genuineness, but also to
fill the columns of the journal.

He himself devoted his energies to two pages of shrewdly edited tit-bits
of information about the great. They were carefully written, often
devoid of any reference to the person whom they affected, and were more
or less innocuous. But in every batch of letters there were always one
or two which gave the master blackmailer an opportunity for extracting
money from people, who had been betrayed by servants or friends. There
was a standing offer in the _Gossip_ of five guineas for any paragraph
which might be useful to the editor, and it is a commentary upon the
morality of human nature that there were times when Farrington paid out
nearly a thousand pounds a week for the information which his
unscrupulous contributors gave him.

There was work here for Poltavo; he was an accomplished scholar, and a
shrewd man of affairs. If Farrington had been forced to accept his
service, having accepted them, he could do no less than admit the wisdom
of his choice. In his big study, with the door locked, Poltavo carefully
sorted the correspondence, thinking the while.

If he played his cards well he knew his future was assured. The
consequence of his present employment, the misery it might bring to the
innocent and to the foolishly guilty alike, did not greatly trouble him;
he was perfectly satisfied with his own position in the matter. He had
found a means of livelihood, which offered enormous rewards and the
minimum of risk. In his brief stay at the Secret House, Farrington had
impressed upon him the necessity for respecting trifles.

"If you can make five shillings out of a working man," was his dictum,
"make it. We cannot afford to despise the smallest amount," and in
consequence Poltavo was paying as much attention to the ill-written and
illiterate scrawls which came from the East End of London, as he was to
the equally illiterate efforts of the under-butler, describing an error
of his master's in a northern ducal seat. Poltavo went through the
letters systematically, putting this epistle to the right, and that to
the left; this to make food for the newspaper; that, as a subject for
further operations. Presently he stopped and looked up at the ceiling.

"So she must marry Frank Doughton within a week," he said to himself in
wonder.

Yes, Farrington had insisted upon carrying out his plans, knowing the
power he held, and he, Poltavo, had accepted the ultimatum in all
meekness of spirit.

"I must be losing my nerve," he muttered. "Married in a week! Am I to
give her up, this gracious, beautiful girl--with her future, or without
her fortune?"

He smiled, and it was not a pleasant smile to see. "No, my friend, I
think you have gone a little too far. You depended too much upon my
acquiescence. Ernesto, _mon ami_, you have to do some quick thinking
between now and next Monday."

A telephone buzzed at his elbow, and he took it off and listened.

"Yes?" he asked, and then he recognized the speaker's voice, and his
voice went soft and caressing, for it was the voice of Doris Gray that
he heard.

"Can you see me to-morrow?" she asked.

"I can see you to-day, my lady, at once, if you wish it," he said,
lightly.

There was a little hesitation at the other end of the wire.

"If you could, I should feel glad," she said. "I am rather troubled."

"Not seriously, I hope?" he asked, anxiously.

"I have had a letter from some one," she said, meaningly.

"I think I understand," he replied; "some one wishes you to do a thing
which is a repugnant to you."

"I cannot say that," she said, and there was despair in her voice; "all
I know is that I am bewildered by the turn events have taken. Do you
know the contents of the letter?"

"I know," he said, gently; "it was my misfortune to be the bearer of the
communication."

"What do you think?" she asked, after a while.

"You know what I think," he said, passionately. "Can you expect me to
agree to this?"

The intensity of his voice frightened her, and she rapidly strove to
bring him down to a condition of normality.

"Come to-morrow," she said, hastily. "I would like to talk it over with
you."

"I will come at once," he said.

"Perhaps you had better not," she hesitated.

"I am coming at once," he said, firmly, and hung up the receiver.

In that moment of resentment against the tyranny of his employer, he
forgot all the dangers which the Secret House threatened; all its swift
and wicked vengeance. He only knew, with the instinct of a beast of prey
who saw its quarry stolen under its very eyes, the loss which this man
was inflicting upon him. Five minutes later he was in Brakely Square
with the girl. She was pale and worried; there were dark circles round
her eyes which spoke eloquently of a sleepless night.

"I do not know what to do," she said. "I am very fond of Frank. I can
speak to you, can I not, Count Poltavo?"

"You may confide in me absolutely," he said, gravely.

"And yet I am not so fond of him," she went on, "that I can marry him
yet."

"Then why do you?" he asked.

"How can I disobey this?" She held the letter out.

He took it from her hand with a little smile, walked to the fireplace
and dropped it gently upon the glowing coals.

"I am afraid you are not carrying out instructions," he said, playfully.

There was something in this action which chilled her; he was thinking
more of his safety and his duty to Farrington than he was of her, she
thought: a curiously inconsistent view to take in all the circumstances,
but it was one which had an effect upon her after actions.

"Now listen to me," he said, with his kindly smile; "you have not to
trouble about this; you are to go your own way and allow me to make it
right with Farrington. He is a very headstrong and ambitious man, and
there is some reason perhaps why he should want you to marry Doughton,
but as to that I will gain a little more information. In the meantime
you are to dismiss the matter from your mind, leaving everything to me."

She shook her head.

"I am afraid I cannot do that," she said. "Unless I have a letter from
my guardian expressing wishes to the contrary, I must carry out his
desires. It is dreadful--dreadful,"--she wrung her hands
piteously,--"that I should be placed in this wretched position. How can
I help him by marrying Frank Doughton? How can I save him--can you tell
me?"

He shook his head.

"Have you communicated with Mr. Doughton?"

She nodded.

"I sent him a letter," she hesitated. "I have kept a draft of it; would
you like to see it?"

A little shade of bitter anger swept across his face, but with an effort
he mastered himself.

"I should," he said, evenly.

She handed the sheet of paper to him.

"DEAR FRANK," it ran, "for some reason which I cannot explain to you, it
is necessary that the marriage which my uncle desired should take place
within the next week. You know my feelings towards you; that I do not
love you, and that if it were left to my own wishes this marriage would
not take place, but for a reason which I cannot at the moment give you I
must act contrary to my own wishes. This is not a gracious nor an easy
thing to say to you, but I know you well enough, with your large,
generous heart and your kindly nature, to realize that you will
understand something of the turmoil of feelings which at present
dominate my heart."

Poltavo finished reading, and put the letter back on the table; he
walked up and down the room without saying a word, then he turned on her
suddenly.

"Madonna!" he said, in the liquid Southern accents of his--he had spent
his early life in Italy and the address came naturally to him--"if Frank
Doughton were I, would you hesitate?"

A look of alarm came into the girl's eyes; he saw then his mistake. He
had confounded her response to his sympathy with a deeper feeling which
she did not possess. In that one glimpse he saw more than she knew
herself, that of the two Frank was the preferable. He raised his hand
and arrested her stammering speech.

"There is no need to tell me," he smiled; "perhaps some day you will
realize that the love Count Poltavo offered you was the greatest
compliment that has ever been paid to you, for you have inspired the one
passion of my life which is without baseness and without ulterior
motives."

He said this in a tremulous voice, and possibly he believed it. He had
said as much before to women whom he had long since forgotten, but who
carried the memory of his wicked face to their graves.

"Now," he said, briskly, "we must wait for Mr. Doughton's answer."

"He has already answered," she said; "he telephoned me."

He smiled.

"How typically English, almost American, in his hustle; and when is the
happy event to take place?" he bantered.

"Oh, please, don't, don't,"--she raised her hands and covered her
face,--"I hardly know that, even now, I have the strength to carry out
my uncle's wishes."

"But when?" he asked, more soberly.

"In three days. Frank is getting a special licence; we are----" She
hesitated, and he waited.

"We are going to Paris," she said, with a pink flush in her face, "but
Frank wishes that we shall live"--she stopped again, and then went on
almost defiantly--"that we shall live apart, although we shall not be
able to preserve that fact a secret."

He nodded.

"I understand," he said; "therein Mr. Doughton shows an innate delicacy,
which I greatly appreciate."

Again that little sense of resentment swept through her; the patronage
in his tone, the indefinable suggestion of possession was, she thought,
uncalled for. That he should approve of Frank in that possessive manner
was not far removed from an impertinence.

"Have you thought?" he asked, after a while, "what would happen if you
did not marry Frank Doughton in accordance with your uncle's
wishes--what terrible calamity would fall upon your uncle?"

She shook her head.

"I do not know," she said, frankly. "I am only beginning to get a dim
idea of Mr. Farrington's real character. I always thought he was a
kindly and considerate man; now I know him to be----" She stopped, and
Poltavo supplied her deficiency of speech.

"You know him to be a criminal," he smiled, "a man who has for years
been playing upon the fears and the credulity of his fellow-creatures.
That must have been a shocking discovery, Miss Gray, but at least you
will acquit him of having stolen your fortune."

"It is all very terrible," she said; "somehow every day brings it to me.
My aunt, Lady Dinsmore, was right."

"Lady Dinsmore is always right," he said, lightly; "it is one of the
privileges of her age and position. But in what respect was she right?"

The girl shook her head.

"I do not think it is loyal of me to tell you, but I must. She always
thought Mr. Farrington was engaged in some shady business and has warned
me time after time."

"An admirable woman," said Poltavo, with a sneer.

"In three days," he went on, thoughtfully. "Well, much may happen in
three days. I must confess that I am anxious to know what would be the
result of this marriage not taking place."

He did not wait for an expression of her views, but with a curt little
bow he ushered himself out of the room.

"Three days," he found himself repeating, as he made his way back to his
house. "Why should Farrington be in such a frantic hurry to marry the
girl off, and why should he have chosen this penniless reporter?"

This was a matter which required a great deal of examination.


Two of those three days were dream days for Frank Doughton; he could not
believe it possible that such a fortune could be his. But with his joy
there ran the knowledge that he was marrying a woman who had no desire
for such a union.

But she would learn to love him; so he promised himself in his optimism
and the assurance of his own love. He had unbounded faith in himself,
and was working hard in these days, not only upon his stories, but upon
the clue which the discovery of the belated letter afforded him. He had
carefully gone through the parish list to discover the Annies of the
past fifty years. In this he was somewhat handicapped by the fact that
there must have been hundreds of Annies who enjoyed no separate
existence, married women who had no property qualification to appear on
ratepayers' lists; anonymous Annies, who perhaps employed that as a pet
name, instead of the name with which they had been christened.

He had one or two clues and was following these industriously. For the
moment, however, he must drop this work and concentrate his mind upon
the tremendous and remarkable business which his coming marriage
involved. He had a series of articles to write for the _Monitor_, and he
applied himself feverishly to this work.

It was two nights before his marriage that he carried the last of his
work to the great newspaper office on the Thames Embankment, and
delivered his manuscript in person to the editor.

That smiling man offered his congratulations to the embarrassed youth.

"I suppose we shall not be looking for any articles from you for quite a
long time," he said, at parting.

"I hope so," said the other. "I do not see why I should starve because I
am married. My wife will be a very rich woman," he said quietly, "but so
far as I am concerned that will make no difference; I do not intend
taking one penny of her fortune."

The journalist clapped him on the shoulder.

"Good lad," he said, approvingly; "the man who lives on his wife's
income is a man who has ceased to live."

"That sounds like an epigram," smiled Frank.

He looked at his watch as he descended the stairs. It was nine o'clock
and he had not dined; he would go up to an eating house in Soho and have
his frugal meal before he retired for the night. He had had a heavy day,
and a heavier day threatened on the morrow. Outside the newspaper office
was a handsome new car, its lacquer work shining in the electric light.
Frank was passing when the chauffeur called him.

"Excuse me, sir," he said, touching his cap, "are you Mr. Frank
Doughton?"

"That is my name," said Frank, in surprise, for he did not recognize
the man.

"I have been asked to call and pick you up, sir."

"Pick me up?" asked the astonished Frank--"by whom?"

"By Sir George Frederick," said the man, respectfully.

Frank knew the name of the member of Parliament and puzzled his brain as
to whether he had ever met him.

"But what does Sir George want with me?" he asked.

"He wanted five minutes' conversation with you, sir," said the man.

It would have been churlish to have refused the member's request;
besides, the errand would take him partly on his way. He opened the door
of the landaulet and stepped in, and as the door swung to behind him, he
found he was not alone in the car.

"What is the----" he began, when a powerful hand gripped his throat, and
he was swung backward on the padded seat as the car moved slowly forward
and, gathering speed as it went, flew along the Thames Embankment with
its prisoner.




CHAPTER XV


In the rectory at Great Bradley, Lady Constance Dex arose from a
sleepless night to confront her placid brother at the breakfast table.
The Reverend Jeremiah Bangley, a stout and easy man, who spent as much
of his time in London as in his rectory, was frankly nonplussed by the
apparition. He was one of those men, common enough, who accept the most
extraordinary happenings as being part of life's normal round. An
earthquake in Little Bradley which swallowed up his church and the major
portion of his congregation would not have interested him any more than
the budding of the trees, or a sudden arrival of flower life in his big
walled garden. Now, however, he was obviously astonished.

"What brings you to breakfast, Constance?" he asked. "I have not seen
you at this table for many years."

"I could not sleep," she said, as she helped herself at the sideboard
to a crisp morsel of bacon. "I think I will take my writing pad to Moor
Cottage."

He pursed his lips, this easy going rector of Little Bradley.

"I have always thought," he said, "that Moor Cottage was not the most
desirable gift the late Mr. Farrington could have made to you." He
paused, to allow her a rejoinder, but as she made no reply, he went on:
"It is isolated, standing on the edge of the moor, away from the
ordinary track of people. I am always scared, my dear Constance, that
one of these days you will have some wretched tramp, or a person of the
criminal classes, causing you a great deal of distress and no little
inconvenience."

There was much of truth in what he said. Moor Cottage, a pretty little
one-storied dwelling, had been built by the owner of the Secret House at
the same time that the house itself had been erected. It was intended,
so the builder said, to serve the purpose of a summer house, and
certainly it offered seclusion, for it was placed on the edge of the
moor, approached by a by-road which was scarcely ever traversed, since
Bradley mines had been worked out and abandoned.

Many years ago when the earth beneath the moor had been tunnelled left
and right by the seekers after tin and lead, Moor Cottage might have
stood in the centre of a hive of industry. The ramshackle remains of the
miners' cottage were to be seen on the other side of the hill; the
broken and deserted headgear of the pit, and the discoloured chimney of
the old power house were still visible a quarter of a mile from the
cottage.

It suited the owner of the Secret House, however, to have this little
cottage erected, though it was nearly two miles from the Secret House,
and he had spared neither expense nor trouble in preparing a handsome
interior.

Lady Constance Dex had been the recipient of many gifts from Mr.
Farrington and his friends. There had been a period when Farrington
could not do enough for her, and had showered upon her every mark of his
esteem, and Moor Cottage had perhaps been the most magnificent of these
presents. Here she could find seclusion, and in the pretty oak-panelled
rooms reconstruct those happy days which Great Bradley had at one time
offered to her.

"It is a little lonely," she smiled at her brother.

She had a good-natured contempt for his opinion. He was a large,
lethargic man, who had commonplace views on all subjects.

"But really you know, Jerry, I am quite a capable person, and Brown
will be near by, in case of necessity."

He nodded, and addressed himself again to the _Times_, the perusal of
which she had interrupted.

"I have nothing more to say," he said from behind his newspaper. By and
by he put it down.

"Who is this Mr. Smith?" he asked, suddenly.

"Mr. Smith?" she said, with interest. "Which Mr. Smith are you referring
to?"

"I think he is a detective person," said the Reverend Jeremiah Bangley;
"he has honoured us with a great number of visits lately."

"You mean----?"

"I mean Great Bradley," he explained. "Do you think there is anything
wrong at the Secret House?"

"What could there be wrong," she asked, "that has not been wrong for the
last ten or twenty years?"

He shrugged his massive shoulders.

"I have never quite approved of the Secret House," he said,
unnecessarily.

She finished her hurried breakfast and rose.

"You have never approved of anything, Jerry," she said, tapping him on
the shoulder as she passed.

She looked through the window; the victoria she had ordered was waiting
at the door, with the imperturbable Brown sitting on the box.

"I shall be back to lunch," she said.

Looking through a window he saw her mount into the carriage carrying a
portfolio. In that letter case, although he did not know it, were the
letters and diaries which Dr. Goldworthy had brought from the Congo. In
the seclusion of Moor Cottage she found the atmosphere to understand the
words, written now in fire upon her very soul, and to plan her future.

There was no servant at Moor Cottage. She was in the habit of sending
one of her own domestic staff after her visit to make it tidy for her
future reception.

She let herself in through the little door placed under the
green-covered porch.

"You can unharness the horse; I shall be here two hours," she said to
the waiting Brown.

The man touched his hat. He was used to these excursions and was
possessed of the patience of his class. He backed the victoria on to the
moor by the side of the fence which surrounded the house. There was a
little stable at the back, but it was never used. He unharnessed the
horse, fixed his nosebag, and sat down to read his favourite newspaper;
a little journal which dealt familiarly with the erratic conduct of the
upper classes. He was not a quick reader, and there was sufficient in
the gossipy journal to occupy his attention for three or four hours. At
the end of an hour he thought he heard his lady's voice calling him, and
jumping up, he walked to the door of the cottage.

He listened, but there was no other sound, and he came back to his
previous position, and continued his study of the decadent aristocracy.
Four hours he waited, and assailed by a most human hunger, his patience
was pardonably exhausted.

He rose slowly, harnessed the horse, and drove the victoria
ostentatiously before the window of the little sitting-room which Lady
Constance Dex used as a study. Another half an hour passed without any
response, and he got down from his box and knocked at the door.

There was no answer; he knocked again; still no reply.

In alarm he went to the window and peered in. The floor was strewn with
papers scattered in confusion. A chair had been overturned. More to the
point, he saw an overturned inkpot, which was eloquent to his ordered
mind of an unusual happening.

Increasingly alarmed, he put his shoulder to the door, but it did not
yield. He tried the window; it was locked.

It was at that moment that a motor came swiftly over the hill from the
direction of the rectory. With a jar it came to a sudden stop before the
house, and T. B. Smith leapt out.

Brown had seen the detective before on his visits to the rectory, and
now hailed him as veritably god-sent.

"Where is Lady Constance?" asked T. B., quickly.

The man pointed to the house with trembling finger.

"She's in there somewhere," he said, fretfully, "but I can't make her
answer ... and the room appears to be very disordered."

He led the way to the window. T. B. looked in and saw that which
confirmed his worst fears.

"Stand back," he said.

He raised his ebony stick and sent it smashing through the glass. In a
second his hand was inside unlocking the latch of the window; a few
seconds later he was in the room itself. He passed swiftly from room to
room, but there was no sign of Lady Constance. On the floor of the study
was a piece of lace collar, evidently wrenched from her gown.

"Hullo!" said Ela, who had followed him. He pointed to the table. On a
sheet of paper was the print of a bloody palm.

"Farrington," said T. B., briefly, "he has been here; but how did he
get out?"

He questioned the coachman closely, but the man was emphatic.

"No, sir," he said, "it would have been impossible for anybody to have
passed out of here without my seeing them. Not only could I see the
cottage from where I sat, but the whole of the hillside."

"Is there any other place where she could be?"

"There is the outhouse," said Brown, after a moment's thought; "we used
to put up the victoria there, but we never use it nowadays in fine
weather."

The outhouse consisted of a large coachhouse and a small stable. There
was no lock to the doors, T. B. noticed, and he pulled them open wide.
There was a heap of straw in one corner, kept evidently as a provision
against the need of the visiting coachman. T. B. stepped into the
outhouse, then suddenly with a cry he leant down, and caught a figure by
the collar and swung him to his feet.

"Will you kindly explain what you are doing here?" he asked, and then
gave a gasp of astonishment, for the sleepy-eyed prisoner in his hands
was Frank Doughton.


"It is a curious story you tell me," said T. B.

"I admit it is curious," said Frank, with a smile, "and I am so sleepy
that I do not know how much I have told you, and how much I have
imagined."

"You told me," recapitulated T. B., "that you were kidnapped last night
in London, that you were carried through London and into the country in
an unknown direction, and that you made your escape from the motor-car
by springing out in the early hours of this morning, whilst the car was
going at a slackened speed."

"That is it," said the other. "I have not the slightest idea where I am;
perhaps you can tell me?"

"You are near Great Bradley," said T. B., with a smile. "I wonder you do
not recognize your home; for home it is, as I understand."

Frank looked round with astonished eyes.

"What were they bringing me here for?" he demanded.

"That remains to be discovered," replied T. B.; "my own impression is
that you----"

"Do you think I was being taken to the Secret House?" interrupted the
young man, suddenly.

T. B. shook his head.

"I should think that was unlikely. I suspect our friend Poltavo of
having carried out this little coup entirely on his own. I further
suspect his having brought the car in this direction with no other
object than to throw suspicion upon our worthy friends across the
hill--and how did you come to the outhouse?"

"I was dead beat," explained Frank. "I had a sudden spasm of strength
which enabled me to out-distance those people who were pursuing me, but
after I had shaken them off I felt that I could drop. I came upon this
cottage, which seemed the only habitation in view, and after
endeavouring to waken the occupants I did the next best thing, I made my
way into the coachhouse and fell asleep."

T. B. had no misgivings so far as this story was concerned; he accepted
it as adding only another obstacle to the difficulties of his already
difficult task.

"You heard no sound whilst you lay there?"

"None whatever," said the young man.

"No sound of a struggle, I mean," said T. B., and then it was that he
explained to Frank Doughton the extraordinary disappearance of the owner
of Moor Cottage.

"She must be in the house," said Frank.

They went back and resumed their search. Upstairs was a bedroom, and
adjoining a bath-room. On the ground floor were two rooms: the study he
had quitted and a smaller room beautifully decorated and containing a
piano. But the search was fruitless; Lady Constance Dex had disappeared
as though the earth had opened and swallowed her up. There was no sign
of a trap in the whole of the little building, and T. B. was baffled.

"It is a scientific axiom," he said, addressing Ela with a thoughtful
glint in his eye, "that matter must occupy space, therefore Lady
Constance Dex must be in existence, she cannot have evaporated into thin
air, and I am not going to leave this place until I find her."

Ela was thinking deeply, and frowning at the untidiness of the table.

"Do you remember that locket which you found on one of the dead men in
Brakely Square?" he asked suddenly.

T. B. nodded. He put his hand in his waistcoat pocket, for he had
carried that locket ever since the night of its discovery.

"Let us have a look at the inscription again," said Ela.

They drew up chairs to the table and examined the little circular label
which they had found in the battered interior.


                              "Mor: Cot.
                          God sav the Keng."


Ela shook his head helplessly.

"I am perfectly sure there is a solution here," he said. "Do you see
those words on the top? 'Mor: Cot.'--that stands for Moor Cottage."

"By Jove, so it does," said T. B., picking up the locket; "that never
struck me before. It was the secret of Moor Cottage which this man
discovered, and with which he was trying to blackmail our friend. So far
as the patriotic postscript is concerned that is beyond my
understanding."

"There is a meaning to it," said Ela, "and it is not a cryptogram
either. You see how he has forgotten to put the 'e' in 'save'? And he
has spelt 'king' 'keng.'"

They waited before the house whilst Brown drove to the rectory, and then
on to the town. Jeremiah Bangley arrived in a state of calm
anticipation. That his sister had disappeared did not seem to strike him
as a matter for surprise, though he permitted himself to say that it was
a very remarkable occurrence.

"I have always warned Constance not to be here alone, and I should never
have forgiven myself if Brown had not been on the spot," he said.

"Can you offer any explanation?"

The rector shook his head. He was totally ignorant of the arrangements
of the house, had never, so he said, put foot in it in his life. This
was perfectly true, for he was an incurious man who did not greatly
bother himself about the affairs of other people. The local police
arrived in half an hour, headed by the chief inspector, who happened to
be in the station when the report was brought in.

"I suppose I had better take this young man to the station?" he said,
indicating Frank.

"Why?" asked T. B. calmly; "what do you gain by arresting him? As a
matter of fact there is no evidence whatever which would implicate Mr.
Doughton, and I am quite prepared to give you my own guarantee to
produce him whenever you may require him.

"The best thing you can do is to get back to town," he said kindly to
that young man; "you need a little sleep. It is not a pleasant prelude
to your marriage. By the way, that is to-morrow, is it not?" he asked,
suddenly.

Frank nodded.

"I wonder if that has anything to do with your kidnapping," said T. B.
thoughtfully. "Is there any person who is anxious that this marriage
should not come about?"

Frank hesitated.

"I hardly like to accuse a man," he said, "but Poltavo----"

"Poltavo?" repeated T. B. quickly.

"Yes," said Frank; "he has some views on the question of Miss Gray."

He spoke reluctantly, for he was loath to introduce Doris' name into the
argument.

"Poltavo would have a good reason," mused T. B. Smith. "Tell me what
happened in the car."

Briefly Frank related the circumstances which had led up to his capture.

"When I found myself in their hands," he said, "I decided to play
'possum for a while. The car was moving at incredible speed, remembering
your stringent traffic regulations,"--he smiled,--"and I knew that any
attempt to escape on my part would result in serious injury to myself.
They made no bones about their intentions. Before we were clear of
London they had pulled the blinds, and one of them had switched on the
electric lamp. They were both masked, and were, I think, foreigners. One
sat opposite to me, all through the night, a revolver on his knees, and
he did not make any disguise of his intention of employing his weapon if
I gave the slightest trouble.

"I could not tell, because of the lowered blinds, which direction we
were taking, but presently we struck the country and they let down one
of the windows without raising the blind and I could smell the sweet
scent of the fields, and knew we were miles away from London.

"I think I must have dozed a little, for very suddenly, it seemed,
daylight came, and I had the good sense in waking to make as little stir
as possible. I found the man sitting opposite was also in a mild doze,
and the other at my side was nodding.

"I took a very careful survey of the situation. The car was moving very
slowly, and evidently the driver had orders to move at no particular
pace through the night, in order to economize the petrol. There was an
inside handle to each of the doors, and I had to make up my mind by
which I was to make my escape. I decided upon the near side. Gathering
up my energies for one supreme effort, I suddenly leapt up, flung open
the door, and jumped out. I had enough experience of the London traffic
to clear the car without stumbling.

"I found myself upon a heath, innocent of any cover, save for a belt of
trees about half a mile ahead of me as I ran. Fortunately the down,
which was apparently flat, was, in fact, of a rolling character, and in
two minutes I must have been out of sight of the car--long before they
had brought the driver, himself half asleep probably, to an
understanding that I had made my escape. They caught sight of me as I
came up from the hollow, and one of them must have fired at me, for I
heard the whistle of a bullet pass my head. That is all the story I have
to tell. It was rather a tame conclusion to what promised to be a most
sensational adventure."

At the invitation of the Reverend Jeremiah he drove back to the rectory,
and left T. B. to continue his search for the missing Lady Constance. No
better result attended the second scrutiny of the rooms than had
resulted from the first.

"The only suggestion I can make now," said T. B., helplessly, "is that
whilst our friend the coachman was reading, his lady slipped out without
attracting his attention and strolled away; she will in all probability
be awaiting us at the rectory."

Yet in his heart he knew that this view was absolutely wrong. The locked
doors, the evidence of a struggle in the room, the bloody hand print,
all pointed conclusively to foul play.

"At any rate Lady Constance Dex is somewhere within the radius of four
miles," he said, grimly, "and I will find her if I have to pull down the
Secret House stone by stone."




CHAPTER XVI


The morning of Doris Gray's wedding dawned fair and bright, and she sat
by the window which overlooked the gardens in Brakely Square, her hands
clasped across her knees, her mind in a very tangle of confusion. It was
happy for her (she argued) that there were so many considerations
attached to this wedding that she had not an opportunity of thinking
out, logically and to its proper end, the consequence of this act of
hers.

She had had a wire from Frank on the night previous, and to her surprise
it had been dated from Great Bradley. For some reason which she could
not define she was annoyed that he could leave London, and be so
absorbed in his work on the eve of his wedding. She gathered that his
presence in that town had to do with his investigations in the
Tollington case. She thought that at least he might have spent one day
near her in case she wished to consult him. He took much for granted,
she thought petulantly. Poltavo, on the contrary, had been most
assiduous in his attention. He had had tea with her the previous
afternoon, and with singular delicacy had avoided any reference to the
forthcoming marriage or to his own views on the subject. But all that he
did not speak, he looked. He conveyed the misery in which he stood with
subtle suggestion. She felt sorry for him, had no doubt of the
genuineness of his affection, or his disinterestedness. A profitable day
for Poltavo in ordinary circumstances.

A maid brought her from her reverie to the practical realities of life.

"Mr. Debenham has called, miss," said the girl. "I have shown him into
the drawing-room."

"Mr. Debenham?" repeated Doris, with a puzzled frown. "Oh, yes, the
lawyer; I will come down to him."

She found the staid solicitor walking up and down the drawing-room
abstractedly.

"I suppose you know that I shall be a necessary guest at your wedding,"
he said, as he shook hands. "I have to deliver to you the keys of your
uncle's safe at the London Safe Deposit. I have a memorandum here of the
exact amount of money which should be in that safe."

He laid the paper on the table.

"You can look at the items at your leisure, but roughly it amounts to
eight hundred thousand pounds, which was left you by your late father,
who, I understand, died when you were a child."

She nodded.

"That sum is in gilt-edged securities, and you will probably find that a
number of dividends are due to you. The late Mr. Farrington, when he
made his arrangements for your future, chose this somewhat unusual and
bizarre method of protecting your money, much against my will. I might
tell you," he went on, "that he consulted me about six years ago on the
subject, and I strongly advised him against it. As it happened, I was
wrong, for immediately afterwards, as his books show, he must have
suffered enormous losses, and although I make no suggestion against his
character,"--he raised his hand deprecatingly,--"yet I do say that the
situation which was created by the slump in Canadian Pacifics of which
he was a large holder, might very easily have tempted a man not so
strong-willed as Mr. Farrington. At the present moment," he went on, "I
have no more to do than discharge my duty, and I have called beforehand
to see you and to ask whether your uncle spoke of the great Tollington
fortune of which he was one of the trustees, though as I believe--as I
know, in fact--he never handled the money."

She looked surprised.

"It is curious that you should ask that," she said. "Mr. Doughton is
engaged in searching for the heir to that fortune."

Debenham nodded.

"So I understand," he said. "I ask because I received a communication
from the other trustees in America, and I am afraid your future
husband's search will be unavailing unless he can produce the heir
within the next forty-eight hours."

"Why is that?" she asked in surprise.

"The terms of the will are peculiar," said Mr. Debenham, walking up and
down as he spoke. "The Tollington fortune, as you may know----"

"I know nothing about it," she interrupted.

"Then I will tell you." He smiled. "The fortune descends to the heir and
to his wife in equal proportions."

"Suppose he is not blessed with a wife?" She smiled with something like
her old gaiety.

"In that case the money automatically goes to the woman the heir
eventually marries. But the terms of the will are that the heir shall be
discovered within twenty years of the date of Tollington's death. The
time of grace expires to-morrow."

"Poor Frank," she said, shaking her head, "and he is working so hard
with his clues! I suppose if he does not produce that mysterious
individual by to-morrow there will be no reward for him?"

The lawyer shook his head.

"I should hardly think it likely," he said, "because the reward is for
the man who complies with the conditions of the will within a stipulated
time. It was because I knew Mr. Doughton had some interest in it, and
because also"--he hesitated--"I thought that your uncle might have taken
you into his confidence."

"That he might have told me who this missing person was, and that he
himself knew; and for some reason suppressed the fact?" she asked,
quickly. "Is that what you suggest, Mr. Debenham?"

"Please do not be angry with me," said the lawyer, quickly; "I do not
wish to say anything against Mr. Farrington; but I know he was a very
shrewd and calculating man, and I thought possibly that he might have
taken you that much into his confidence, and that you might be able to
help your future husband a part of the way to a very large sum of
money."

She shook her head again.

"I have absolutely no knowledge of the subject. My uncle never took me
into his confidence," she said; "he was very uncommunicative where
business was concerned--although I am sure he was fond of me." Her eyes
filled with tears, not at the recollection of his kindness, but at the
humiliation she experienced at playing a part in which she had no heart.
It made her feel inexpressibly mean and small.

"That is all," said Mr. Debenham. "I shall see you at the registrar's
office."

She nodded.

"May I express the hope," he said, in his heavy manner, "that your life
will be a very happy one, and that your marriage will prove all you hope
it will be?"

"I hardly know what I hope it will be," she said wearily, as she
accompanied him to the door.

That good man shook his head sadly as he made his way back to his
office.

Was there ever so unromantic and prosaic affair as this marriage,
thought Doris, as she stepped into the taxicab which was to convey her
to the registrar's office? She had had her dreams, as other girls had
had, of that wonderful day when with pealing of the organ she would walk
up the aisle perhaps upon the arm of Gregory Farrington, to a marriage
which would bring nothing but delight and happiness. And here was the
end of her dreams, a great heiress and a beautiful girl rocking across
London in a hired cab to a furtive marriage.

Frank was waiting for her on the pavement outside the grimy little
office. Mr. Debenham was there, and a clerk he had brought with him as
witness. The ceremony was brief and uninteresting; she became Mrs.
Doughton before she quite realized what was happening.

"There is only one thing to do now," said the lawyer as they stood
outside again on the sunlit pavement.

He looked at his watch.

"We had best go straight away to the London Safe Deposit, and, if you
will give me the authority, I will take formal possession of your
fortune and place it in the hands of my bankers. I think these things
had better be done regularly."

The girl acquiesced.

Frank was singularly silent during the drive; save to make some comment
upon the amount of traffic in the streets, he did not speak to her and
she was grateful for his forbearance. Her mind was in a turmoil; she was
married--that was all she knew--married to somebody she liked but did
not love. Married to a man who had been chosen for her partly against
her will. She glanced at him out of the corners of her eyes; if she was
joyless, no less was he. It was an inauspicious beginning to a married
life which would end who knew how? Before the depressing granite façade
of the London Safe Deposit the party descended, Mr. Debenham paid the
cabman, and they went down the stone steps into the vaults of the
repository.

There was a brief check whilst Mr. Debenham explained his authority for
the visit, and it was when the officials were making reference to their
books that the party was augmented by the arrival of Poltavo.

He bowed over the girl's hand, holding it a little longer than Frank
could have liked, murmured colourless congratulations and nodded to
Debenham.

"Count Poltavo is here, I may say," explained the lawyer, "by your late
uncle's wishes. They were contained in a letter he wrote to me a few
days before he disappeared."

Frank nodded grudgingly; still he was generous enough to realize
something of this man's feelings if he loved Doris, and he made an
especial effort to be gracious to the new-comer.

A uniformed attendant led them through innumerable corridors till they
came to a private vault guarded by stout bars. The attendant opened
these and they walked into a little stone chamber, illuminated by
overhead lights.

The only article of furniture in the room was a small safe which stood
in one corner. A very small safe indeed, thought Frank, to contain so
large a fortune. The lawyer turned the key in the lock methodically, and
the steel door swung back. The back of Mr. Debenham obscured their view
of the safe's interior. Then he turned with an expression of wonder.

"There is nothing here," he said.

"Nothing!" gasped Doris.

"Save this," said the lawyer.

He took a small envelope and handed it to the girl. She opened it
mechanically and read:

"I have, unfortunately, found it necessary to utilize your fortune for
the furtherance of my plans. You must try and forgive me for this; but I
have given you a greater one than you have lost, a husband."

She looked up.

"What does this mean?" she whispered.

Frank took the letter from her hand and concluded the reading.

"A husband in Frank Doughton...."

The words swam before his eyes.

"And Frank Doughton is the heir to the Tollington millions, as his
father was before him. All the necessary proofs to establish his
identity will be discovered in the sealed envelope which the lawyer
holds, and which is inscribed 'C.'"

The letter was signed "Gregory Farrington."

The lawyer was the first to recover his self-possession; his practical
mind went straight to the business at hand.

"There is such an envelope in my office," he said, "given to me by Mr.
Farrington with strict instructions that it was not to be handed to his
executors or to any person until definite instructions
arrived--instructions which would be accompanied by unmistakable proof
as to the necessity for its being handed over. I congratulate you, Mr.
Doughton."

He turned and shook hands with the bewildered Frank, who had been
listening like a man in a dream; the heir to the Tollington millions;
he, the son of George Doughton, and all the time he had been looking
for--what? For his own grandmother!

It came on him all of a rush. He knew now that all his efforts, all his
search might have been saved, if he had only realized the Christian name
of his father's mother.

He had only the dimmest recollection of the placid-faced lady who had
died whilst he was at school; he had never associated in his mind this
serene old lady, who had passed away only a few hours before her
beloved husband, with the Annie for whom he had searched. It made him
gasp--then he came to earth quickly as he realized that his success had
come with the knowledge of his wife's financial ruin. He looked at her
as she stood there--it was too vast a shock for her to realize at once.

He put his arm about her shoulder, and Poltavo, twirling his little
moustache, looked at the two through his lowered lids with an ugly smile
playing at the corner of his mouth.

"It is all right, dear," said Frank soothingly; "your money is
secure--it was only a temporary use he made of it."

"It is not that," she said, with a catch in her throat; "it is the
feeling that my uncle trapped you into this marriage. I did not mind his
dissipating my own fortune; the money is nothing to me. But he has
caught you by a trick, and he has used me as a bait." She covered her
face with her hands.

In a few moments she had composed herself; she spoke no other word, but
suffered herself to be led out of the building into the waiting cab.
Poltavo watched them drive off with that fierce little smile of his, and
turned to the lawyer.

"A clever man, Mr. Farrington," he said, in a bitter tone of reluctant
admiration.

The lawyer looked at him steadily.

"His Majesty's prisons are filled with men who specialize in that kind
of cleverness," he said, drily, and left Poltavo without another word.




CHAPTER XVII


T. B. Smith was playing a round of golf at Walton Heath, when the news
was telephoned through to him.

He left immediately for town, and picked up Ela at luncheon at the Fritz
Hotel, where the detective had his headquarters.

"The whole thing is perfectly clear, now," he said. "The inexplicable
disappearance of Mr. Farrington is explained in poster type, 'that he
who runs may read.'"

"I am a little hazy about the solution myself," said Ela dubiously.

"Then I will put it in plain language for you," said T. B. as he speared
a sardine from the _hors d'oeuvre_ dish. "Farrington knew all along
that the heir to the Tollington millions was George Doughton. He knew it
years and years ago, and it was for that reason he settled at Great
Bradley, where the Doughtons had their home. Evidently the two older
Doughtons were dead at this time, and only George Doughton, the romantic
and altogether unpractical explorer, represented the family.

"George was in love with the lady who is now known as Lady Constance
Dex, and knowing this, Farrington evidently took every step that was
possible to ingratiate himself into her good graces. He knew that the
fortune would descend equally to Doughton and to his wife. Doughton was
a widower and had a son, a youngster at the time, and it is very
possible that, the boy being at school, and being very rarely in Great
Bradley, Farrington had no idea of his existence.

"The knowledge that this boy was alive must have changed all his plans;
at any rate, the engagement was allowed to drift on, whilst he matured
some scheme whereby he could obtain a large portion of the Tollington
millions for his own use. Again I think his plans must have been
changed.

"It was whilst he was at Great Bradley that he was entrusted with the
guardianship of Doris Gray, and as his affection for the young girl
grew--an affection which I think was one of the few wholesome things in
his life--he must have seen the extraordinary chance which fate had
placed in his way.

"With diabolical ingenuity and with a remorselessness which is
reminiscent of the Borgias he planned first George Doughton's death,
and then the bringing together of Doughton's son and his own ward. There
is every proof of this to be found in his subsequent actions. He was
prepared to introduce the young people to one another, and by affording
them opportunities for meeting, and such encouragement as he could give,
to bring about the result he so desired.

"But things did not move fast enough for him, and then he must have
learnt, as the other trustees seem to have learnt recently, that there
was an undiscovered time limit. He threw out hints to his niece, hints
which were received rather coldly. He had taken the bold step of
employing Frank Doughton to discover--himself! That was a move which had
a twofold purpose. It kept the young man in contact with him. It also
satisfied the other trustees, who had entrusted to Farrington the task
of employing the necessary measures to discover the missing heir.

"But neither hint nor suggestion served him. The girl's fortune was due
for delivery to her care, and his guardianship expired almost at the
same time as the time limit for discovery of the Tollington millionaire
came to an end. He had to take a desperate step; there were other
reasons, of course, contributing to his move.

"The knowledge that he was suspected by me, the certainty that Lady
Constance Dex would betray him, once she discovered that he had sent her
lover to his death, all these were contributing factors, but the main
reason for his disappearance was the will that was read after his bogus
death.

"In that will he conveyed unchallengeable instructions for the girl to
marry Frank Doughton without delay. I suspect that the girl now knows he
is alive. Probably, panic-stricken by her tardiness, he has disclosed
his hand so far as the alleged death is concerned."

T. B. looked out of the window on to the stream of life which was
flowing east and west along Piccadilly; his face was set in a little
frown of doubt and anxiety.

"I can take Farrington to-morrow if I want to," he said after a moment,
"but I wish to gather up every string of organization in my hands."

"What of Lady Constance Dex?" asked Ela. "Whilst we are waiting, she is
in some little danger."

T. B. shook his head.

"If she is not dead now," he said simply, "she will be spared. If
Farrington wished to kill her--for Farrington it was who spirited her
away--he could have done so in the house; no one would have been any the
wiser as to the murderer. Lady Constance must wait; we must trust to
luck before I inspect that underground chamber of which I imagine she is
at present an unwilling inmate. I want to crush this blackmailing
force," he said, thumping the table with energy; "I want to sweep out of
England the whole organization which is working right under the nose of
the police and in defiance of all laws; and until I have done that, I
shall not sleep soundly in my bed."

"And Poltavo?"

"Poltavo," smiled T. B., "can wait for just a little while."

He paid the bill and the two men passed out of the hotel and crossed
Piccadilly. A man who had been lounging along apparently studying the
shop windows saw them out of the corner of his eye and followed them
carelessly. Another man, no less ostentatiously reading a newspaper, as
he walked along the pavement on the opposite side of the thoroughfare,
followed close behind.

T. B. and his companion turned into Burlington Arcade and reached Cork
Street. Save for one or two pedestrians the street was utterly deserted,
and the first of the shadowers quickened his pace. He put his hand in
his tail pocket and took out something which glinted in the April
sunlight, but before he could raise his hand the fourth man, now on his
heels, dropped his newspaper, and flinging one arm around the shadower's
neck, and placing his knee in the small of the other's back, wrenched
the pistol away with his disengaged hand.

T. B. turned at the sound of the struggle and came back to assist the
shadowing detective. The prisoner was a little man, sharp-featured, and
obviously a member of one of the great Latin branches of the human race.
A tiny black moustache, fierce scowling eyebrows, and liquid brown eyes
now blazing with hate, spoke of a Southern origin.

Deftly the three police officers searched and disarmed him; a pair of
adjustable handcuffs snapped upon the man's thin wrists, and before the
inevitable crowd could gather the prisoner and his custodians were being
whirled to Vine Street in a cab.

They placed the man in the steel dock and asked him the usual questions,
but he maintained a dogged silence. That his object had been
assassination no one could doubt, for in addition to the automatic
pistol, which he had obviously intended using at short range, trusting
to luck to make his escape, they found a long stiletto in his breast
pocket.

More to the point, and of greater interest to T. B., there was a
three-line scrawl on a piece of paper in Italian, which, translated,
showed that minute instructions had been given to the would-be murderer
as to T. B.'s whereabouts.

"Put him in a cell," said T. B. "I think we are going to find things
out. If this is not one of Poltavo's hired thugs, I am greatly
mistaken."

Whatever he was, the man offered no information which might assist the
detective in his search for the truth, but maintained an unbroken
silence, and T. B. gave up the task of questioning him in sheer despair.

The next morning at daybreak the prisoner was aroused and told to dress.
He was taken out to where a motor car was awaiting him, and a few
moments later he was speeding on the way to Dover. Two detective
officers placed him on a steamer and accompanied him to Calais. At
Calais they took a courteous leave of him, handing him a hundred francs
and the information in his own tongue that he had been deported on an
order from the Home Secretary, obtained at midnight the previous night.

The prisoner took his departure with some eagerness and spent the
greater portion of his hundred francs in addressing a telegram to
Poltavo.

T. B. Smith, who knew that telegram would come, was sitting in the
Continental instrument room of the General Post Office when it arrived.
He was handed a copy of the telegram and read it. Then he smiled.

"Thank you," he said, as he passed it back to the Superintendent of the
department, "this may now be transmitted for delivery. I know all I want
to know."

Poltavo received the message an hour later, and having read it, cursed
his subordinate's indiscretion, for the message was in Italian, plain
for everybody to read who understood that language, and its purport easy
to understand for anybody who had a knowledge of the facts.

He waited all that day for a visit from the police, and when T. B.
arrived in the evening Poltavo was ready with an excuse and an
explanation. But neither excuse nor explanation was asked for. T. B.'s
questions had to do with something quite different, namely the new Mrs.
Doughton and her vanished fortune.

"I was in the confidence of Mr. Farrington," said Poltavo, relieved to
find the visit had nothing to do with that which he most dreaded, "but I
was amazed to discover that the safe was empty. It was a tremendous
tragedy for the poor young lady. She is in Paris now with her husband,"
he added.

T. B. nodded.

"Perhaps you will give me their address?" he asked.

"With pleasure," said Count Poltavo, reaching for his address book.

"I may be going to Paris myself to-morrow," T. B. went on, "and I will
look these young people up. I suppose it is not the correct thing for
any one to call upon honeymoon couples, but a police officer has
privileges."

There was an exchange of smiles. Poltavo was almost exhilarated that T.
B.'s visit had nothing to do with him personally. A respect, which
amounted almost to fear, characterized his attitude toward the great
Scotland Yard detective. He credited T. B. with qualities which perhaps
that admirable man did not possess, but, as a set-off against this, he
failed to credit him with a wiliness which was peculiarly T. B.'s chief
asset. For who could imagine that the detective's chief object in
calling upon Poltavo that evening was to allay his suspicions and soothe
down his fears. Yet T. B. came for no other reason and with no other
purpose. It was absolutely necessary that Poltavo should be taken off
his guard, for T. B. was planning the coup which was to end for all time
the terror under which hundreds of innocent people in England were
lying.

After an exchange of commonplace civilities the two men parted,--T. B.,
as he said, with his hand on the door, to prepare for his Paris trip,
and Poltavo to take up what promised to be one of the most interesting
cases that the Fallock blackmailers had ever handled.

He waited until he heard the door close after the detective; until he
had watched him, from the window, step into his cab and be whirled away,
then he unlocked the lower drawer of his desk, touched a spring in the
false bottom, and took from a secret recess a small bundle of letters.

Many of the sheets of notepaper which he spread out on the table before
him bore the strawberry crest of his grace the Duke of Ambury. The
letters were all in the same sprawling handwriting; ill-spelt and
blotted, but they were very much to the point. The Duke of Ambury, in
his exuberant youth, had contracted a marriage with a lady in Gibraltar.
His regiment had been stationed at that fortress when his succession to
the dukedom had been a very remote possibility, and the Spanish lady to
whom, as the letters showed, he had plighted his troth, and to whom he
was eventually married in the name of Wilson (a copy of the marriage
certificate was in the drawer), had been a typical Spaniard of singular
beauty and fascination, though of no distinguished birth.

Apparently his grace had regretted his hasty alliance, for two years
after his succession to the title, he had married the third daughter of
the Earl of Westchester without--so far as the evidence in Poltavo's
possession showed--having gone through the formality of releasing
himself from his previous union.

Here was a magnificent coup, the most splendid that had ever come into
the vision of the blackmailers, for the Duke of Ambury was one of the
richest men in England, a landlord who owned half London and had estates
in almost every county. If ever there was a victim who was in a position
to be handsomely bled, here was one.

The Spanish wife was now dead, but an heir had been born to the Duke of
Ambury before the death, and the whole question of succession was
affected by the threatened disclosure. All the facts of the case were in
Poltavo's possession; they were written in this curiously uneducated
hand which filled the pages of the letters now spread upon the table in
front of him. The marriage certificate had been supplied, and a copy of
the death certificate had also been obligingly extracted by a peccant
servant, and matters were now so far advanced that Poltavo had received,
through the Agony column of the _Times_, a reply to the demand he had
sent to his victim.

That reply had been very favourable; there had been no suggestion of
lawyers; no hint of any intervention on the part of the police. Ambury
was willing to be bled, willing indeed, so the agony advertisement
indicated to Poltavo, to make any financial sacrifice in order to save
the honour of his house.

It was only a question of terms now. Poltavo had decided upon fifty
thousand pounds. That sum would be sufficient to enable him to clear out
of England and to enjoy life as he best loved it, without the necessity
for taking any further risks. With Doris Gray removed from his hands,
with the approval of society already palling upon him, he thirsted for
new fields and new adventures. The fifty thousand seemed now within his
grasp. He should, by his agreement with Farrington, hand two-thirds of
that sum to his employer, but even the possibility of his doing this
never for one moment occurred to him.

Farrington, so he told himself, a man in hiding, powerless and in
Poltavo's hands practically, could not strike back at him; the cards
were all in favour of the Count. He had already received some ten
thousand pounds as a result of his work in London, and he had frantic
and ominous letters from Dr. Fall demanding that the "house" share
should be forwarded without delay. These demands Poltavo had treated
with contempt. He felt master of the situation, inasmuch that he had
placed the major portion of the balance of money in hand, other than
that which had been actually supplied by Farrington, to his own credit
in a Paris bank. He was prepared for all eventualities, and here he was
promised the choicest of all his pickings--for the bleeding of the Duke
of Ambury would set a seal upon previous accomplishments.

He rang a bell, and a man came, letting himself into the room with a
key. He was an Italian with a peculiarly repulsive face; one of the
small fry whom Poltavo had employed from time to time to do such work as
was beneath his own dignity, or which promised an unnecessary measure of
danger in its performance.

"Carlos," said Poltavo, speaking in Italian, "Antonio has been arrested,
and has been taken to Calais by the police."

"That I know, signor," nodded the man. "He is very fortunate. I was
afraid when the news came that he would be put into prison."

Poltavo smiled.

"The ways of the English police are beyond understanding," he said
lightly. "Here was our Antonio, anxious and willing to kill the head of
the detective department, and they release him! Is it not madness? At
any rate, Antonio will not be coming back, because though they are mad,
the police are not so foolish as to allow him to land again. I have
telegraphed to our friend to go on to Paris and await me, and here let
me say, Carlos,"--he tapped the table with the end of his
penholder,--"that if you by ill-fortune should ever find yourself in the
same position of our admirable and worthy Antonio, I beg that you will
not send me telegrams."

"You may be assured, excellent signor," said the man with a little grin,
"that I shall not send you telegrams, for I cannot write."

"A splendid deficiency," said Poltavo.

He took up a letter from the table.

"You will deliver this to a person who will meet you at the corner of
Branson Square. The exact position I have already indicated to you."

The man nodded.

"This person will give you in exchange another letter. You will not
return to me but you will go to your brother's house in Great Saffron
Street, and outside that house you will see a man standing who wears a
long overcoat. You will brush past him, and in doing so you will drop
this envelope into his pocket--you understand?"

"Excellency, I quite understand," said the man.

"Go, and God be with you," said the pious Poltavo, sending forth a
message which he believed would bring consternation and terror into the
bosom of the Duke of Ambury.

It was late that night when Carlos Freggetti came down a steep declivity
into Great Saffron Street and walked swiftly along that deserted
thoroughfare till he came to his brother's house. His brother was a
respectable Italian artisan, engaged by an asphalt company in London.
Near the narrow door of the tenement in which his relative lived, a
stranger stood, apparently awaiting some one. Carlos, in passing him,
stumbled and apologized under his breath. At that moment he slipped the
letter into the other's pocket. His quick eyes noted the identity of the
stranger. It was Poltavo. No one else was in the street, and in the dim
light even the keenest of eyes would not have seen the transfer of the
envelope. Poltavo strolled to the end of the thoroughfare, jumped into
the taxicab which was waiting and reached his house after various
transferences of cabs without encountering any of T. B.'s watchful
agents. In his room he opened the letter with an anxious air. Would
Ambury agree to the exorbitant sum he had demanded? And if he did not
agree, what sum would he be prepared to pay as the price of the
blackmailer's silence? The first words brought relief to him.

"I am willing to pay the sum you ask, although I think you are guilty of
a dastardly crime," read the letter, "and since you seem to suspect my
bonafides, I shall choose, as an agent to carry the money to you, an old
labourer on my Lancashire estate who will be quite ignorant of the
business in hand, and who will give you the money in exchange for the
marriage certificate. If you will choose a rendezvous where you can
meet, a rendezvous which fulfills all your requirements as to privacy, I
will undertake to have my man on the spot at the time you wish."

There was a triumphant smile on Poltavo's face as he folded the letter.

"Now," he said half aloud, "now, my friend Farrington, you and I will
part company. You have ceased to be of any service to me; your value has
decreased in the same proportion as my desire for freedom has advanced.
Fifty thousand pounds!" he repeated admiringly. "Ernesto, you have a
happy time before you. All the continent of Europe is at your feet, and
this sad England is behind you. Congratulations, _amigo_!"

The question of the rendezvous was an important one. Though he read
into the letter an eagerness on the part of his victim to do anything to
avoid the scandal and the exposure which Poltavo threatened, yet he did
not trust him. The old farm labourer was a good idea, but where could
they meet? When Poltavo had kidnapped Frank Doughton he had intended
taking him to a little house he had hired in the East End of London. The
journey to the Secret House was a mere blind to throw suspicion upon
Farrington and to put the police off the real track. The car would have
returned to London, and under the influence of a drug he had intended to
smuggle Frank into the small house at West Ham, where he was to be
detained until the period which Farrington had stipulated had expired.

But the transfer of money in the house was a different matter. The place
could be surrounded by police. No, it must be an open space; such a
space as would enable Poltavo to command a clear view on every side.

Why not Great Bradley, he thought, after a while? Again he would be
serving two purposes. He would be leading the police to the Secret
House, and he would have the mansion of mystery and all its resources as
a refuge in case anything went wrong at the last moment. He could, in
the worst extremity, explain that he was collecting the money on behalf
of Farrington.

Yes, Great Bradley and the wild stretch of down on the south of the town
was the place. He made his arrangements accordingly.




CHAPTER XVIII


It was three days after the exchange of letters that Count Poltavo, in
the rough tweeds of a country gentleman--a garb which hardly suited his
figure or presence--strolled carelessly across the downs, making his way
to their highest point, a great rolling slope, from the crest of which a
man could see half a dozen miles in every direction.

The sky was overcast and a chill wind blew; it was such a day upon which
he might be certain no pleasure-seekers would be abroad. To his left,
half hidden in the furthermost shelter of the downs, veiled as it was
for ever under a haze of blue grey smoke, lay Great Bradley, with its
chimneys and its busy industrial life. To his right he caught a glimpse
of the square ugly façade of the Secret House, half hidden by the
encircling trees. To its right was a chimney stack from which a lazy
feather of smoke was drifting. Behind him the old engine house of the
deserted mines, and to the right of that the pretty little cottage from
which a week before Lady Constance Dex had so mysteriously disappeared,
and which in consequence had been an object of pilgrimage for the whole
countryside.

But Lady Constance Dex's disappearance had become a nine days' wonder.
There were many explanations offered for her unexpected absence. The
police of the country were hunting systematically and leisurely, and
only T. B. and those in his immediate confidence were satisfied that the
missing woman was less than two miles away from the scene of her
disappearance.

Count Poltavo had armed himself with a pair of field-glasses, and now he
carefully scrutinized all the roads which led to the downs. A motor-car,
absurdly diminutive from the distance, came spinning along the winding
white road two miles away. He watched it as it mounted the one hill and
descended the other, and kept his glasses on it until it vanished in a
cloud of dust on the London road. Then he saw what he sought. Coming
across the downs a mile away was the bent figure of a man who stopped
now and again to look about, as though uncertain as to the direction he
should take. Poltavo, lying flat upon the ground, his glasses fixed upon
the man, waited, watching the slow progress with lazy interest.

He saw an old man, white-bearded and grey-haired, carrying his hat in
his hand as he walked. His rough homespun clothing, his collarless shirt
open at the throat, the plaid scarf around his neck, all these Poltavo
saw through his powerful glasses and was satisfied.

This was not the kind of man to play tricks, he smiled to himself.
Poltavo's precautions had been of an elaborate nature. Three roads led
to the downs, and in positions at equal distances from where he stood he
had placed three cars. He was ready for all emergencies. If he had to
fly, then whichever way of escape was necessary would bring him to a
means of placing a distance between himself and any possible pursuer.

The old man came nearer. Poltavo made a hasty but narrow survey of the
messenger.

"Good," he said.

He walked to meet the old man.

"You have a letter for me?" he inquired.

The other glanced at him suspiciously.

"Name?" he asked gruffly.

"My name," said the smiling Pole, "is Poltavo."

Slowly the messenger groped in his pockets and produced a heavy package.
"You've got to give me something," he said.

Poltavo handed over a sealed packet, receiving in exchange the
messenger's.

Again Poltavo shot a smiling glance at this sturdy old man. Save for the
beard and the grey hair which showed beneath the broad-brimmed,
wide-awake hat, this might have been a young man.

"This is an historic meeting," Poltavo went on gaily. His heart was
light and his spirits as buoyant as ever they had been in his life. All
the prospects which this envelope, now bulging in his pocket, promised,
rose vividly before his eyes.

"Tell me your name, my old friend, that I may carry it with me, and on
some occasion which is not yet, that I may toast your health."

"My name," said the old man, "is T. B. Smith, and I shall take you into
custody on a charge of attempting to extort money by blackmail."

Poltavo sprang back, his face ashen. One hand dived for his
pistol-pocket, but before he could reach it T. B. was at his throat.
That moment the Pole felt two arms gripping him, two steel bands they
seemed, and likely to crush his arms into his very body. Then he went
over with the full weight of the detective upon him, and was momentarily
stunned by the shock. He came to himself rapidly, but not quickly
enough. He was conscious of something cold about his wrists, and a none
too kindly hand dragged him to his feet. T. B. with his white beard all
awry was a comical figure, but Poltavo had no sense of humour at that
moment.

"I think I have you at last, my friend," said T. B. pleasantly. He was
busy removing his disguise and wiping his face clean of the grease
paint, which had been necessary, with a handkerchief which was already
grimy with his exertions.

"You will have some difficulty in proving anything against me," said the
other defiantly; "there is only you and I, and my word is as good as
yours. As to the Duke of Ambury----"

T. B. laughed, a long chuckling laugh of delight.

"My poor man," he said pityingly, "there is no Duke of Ambury. I
depended somewhat upon your ignorance of English nobility, but I confess
that I did not think you would fall so quickly to the bait. The Dukedom
of Ambury ceased to exist two hundred years ago. It is one of those
titles which have fallen into disuse. Ambury Castle, from which the
letters were addressed to you, is a small suburban villa on the
outskirts of Bolton, the rent of which," he said carefully, "is, I
believe, some forty pounds a year. We English have a greater imagination
than you credit us with, Count," he went on, "and imagination takes no
more common flight than the namings of the small dwellings of our
humble fellow-citizens."

He took his prisoner by the arm and led him across the downs.

"What are you going to do with me?" asked Poltavo.

"I shall first of all take you to Great Bradley police station, and then
I shall convey you to London," said T. B. "I have three warrants for
you, including an extradition warrant issued on behalf of the Russian
Government, but I think they may have to wait a little while before they
obtain any satisfaction for your past misdeeds."

The direction they took led them to Moor Cottage. In a quarter of an
hour a force of police would be on the spot, for T. B. had timed his
arrangements almost to the minute. He opened the door of the cottage and
pushed his prisoner inside.

"We will avoid the study," he smiled; "you probably know our mutual
friend Lady Constance Dex disappeared under somewhat extraordinary
circumstances from that room, and since I have every wish to keep you,
we will take the drawing-room as a temporary prison."

He opened the door of the little room in which the piano was, and
indicated to his captive to sit in one of the deep-seated chairs.

"Now, my friend," said T. B., "we have a chance of mutual
understanding. I do not wish to disguise from you the fact that you are
liable to a very heavy sentence. That you are only an agent I am aware,
but in this particular case you were acting entirely on your own
account. You have made elaborate and thorough preparations for leaving
England."

Poltavo smiled.

"That is true," he said, frankly.

T. B. nodded.

"I have seen your trunks all beautifully new, and imposingly labelled,"
he smiled, "and I have searched them."

Poltavo sat, his elbows on his knees, reflectively smoothing his
moustache with his manacled hands.

"Is there any way I can get out of this?" he asked, after a while.

"You can make things much easier for yourself," replied T. B. quietly.

"In what way?"

"By telling me all you know about Farrington and giving me any
information you can about the Secret House. Where, for instance, is Lady
Constance Dex?"

The other shrugged his shoulders.

"She is alive, I can tell you that. I had a letter from Fall in which he
hinted as much. I do not know how they captured her, or the
circumstances of the case. All I can tell you is that she is perfectly
well and being looked after. You see Farrington had to take her--she
shot at him once--hastened his disappearance in fact, and there was
evidence that she was planning further reprisals. As to the mysteries of
the Secret House," he said, frankly, "I know little or nothing.
Farrington, of course, is----"

"Montague Fallock," said T. B. quietly. "I know that also."

"Then what else do you want to know?" asked the other, in surprise. "I
am perfectly willing, if you can make it easy for me, to tell you
everything. The man who is known as Moole is a half-witted old farm
labourer who was picked up by Farrington some years ago to serve his
purpose. He is the man who unknowingly poses as a millionaire. It is his
estate which Farrington is supposed to be administering. You see," he
explained, "this rather takes off the suspicion which naturally attaches
to a house which nobody visits, and it gives the inmates a certain
amount of protection."

"That I understand," said T. B.; "it is, as you say, an ingenious
idea--what of Fall?"

Poltavo shrugged his shoulders.

"You know as much of him as I. There are, however, many things which
you may not know," he went on slowly, "and of these there is one which
you would pay a high price to learn. You will never take Farrington."

"May I ask why?" asked T. B. interestedly.

"That is my secret," said the other; "that is the secret I am willing to
sell you."

"And the price?" asked T. B. after a pause.

"The price is my freedom," said the other boldly. "I know you can do
anything with the police. As yet, no charge has been made against me. At
the most, it is merely a question of attempting to obtain money by a
trick--and even so you will have some difficulty in proving that I am
guilty. Yes, I know you will deny this, but I have some knowledge of the
law, Mr. Smith, and I have also some small experience of English juries.
It is not the English law that I am afraid of, and it is not the
sentence which your judges will pass upon me which fills me with
apprehension. I am afraid of my treatment at the hands of the Russian
Government."

He shivered a little.

"It is because I wish to avoid extradition that I make this offer. Put
things right for me, and I will place in your hands, not only the secret
of Farrington's scheme for escape, but also the full list of his agents
through the country. You will find them in no books," he said with a
smile; "my stay in the Secret House was mainly occupied from morning
till night in memorizing those names and those addresses."

T. B. looked at him thoughtfully.

"There is something in what you say," he said. "I must have a moment to
consider your offer."

He heard a noise from the road without and pulled aside the blind. A car
had driven up and was discharging a little knot of plain clothes
Scotland Yard men. Amongst them he recognized Ela.

"I shall take the liberty of locking you in this room for a few moments
whilst I consult my friends," said T. B.

He went out, turned the key in the lock and put it in his pocket.
Outside he met Ela.

"Have you got him?" asked the detective.

T. B. nodded.

"I have taken him," he said; "moreover, I rather fancy I have got the
whole outfit in my hands."

"The Secret House?" asked Ela eagerly.

"Everything," said T. B.; "it all depends upon what we can do with
Poltavo. If we can avoid bringing him before a magistrate, I can smash
this organization. I know it is contrary to the law, but it is in the
interests of the law. How many men have we available?"

"There are a hundred and fifty in the town of Great Bradley itself,"
said Ela calmly; "half of them local constabulary, and half of them our
own men."

"Send a man down to order them to take up a position round the Secret
House, allow nobody to leave it, stop all motor-cars approaching or
departing from the house, and above all things no car is to leave Great
Bradley without its occupants being carefully scrutinized. What's that?"
he turned suddenly.

A sudden muffled scream had broken into the conversation and it had come
from the inside of the cottage.

"Quick!" snapped T. B.

He sprang into the passage of the cottage, reached the door of the room
where he had left his prisoner, slipped the key in the lock with an
unerring hand and flung open the door.

The room was empty.




CHAPTER XIX


Farrington and Dr. Fall were closeted together in the latter's office.
Something had happened, which was responsible for the gloom on the face
of the usually imperturbable doctor, and for the red rage which glowered
in the older man's eyes.

"You are sure of this?" he asked.

"Quite sure," said Dr. Fall briefly; "he is making every preparation to
leave London. His trunks went away from Charing Cross last night for
Paris. He has let his house and collected the rent in advance, and he
has practically sold the furniture. There can be no question whatever
that our friend has betrayed us."

"He would not dare," breathed Farrington.

The veins stood out on his forehead; he was controlling his passionate
temper by a supreme effort.

"I saved this man from beggary, Fall; I took the dog out of the gutter,
and I gave him a chance when he had already forfeited his life. He would
not dare!"

"My experience of criminals of this character," said Dr. Fall calmly,
"is that they will dare anything. You see, he is a particularly
obnoxious specimen of his race; all suaveness, treachery, and
remorseless energy. He would betray you; he would betray his own
brother. Did he not shoot his father--or his alleged father, some years
ago? I asked you not to trust him, Farrington; if I had had my way, he
would never have left this house."

Farrington shook his head.

"It was for the girl's sake I let him go. Yes, yes," he went on, seeing
the look of surprise in the other's face, "it was necessary that I
should have somebody who stood in fear of me, who would further my plans
in that direction. The marriage was necessary."

"You have been, if you will pardon my expressing the opinion," said Dr.
Fall moodily, "just a little bit sentimental, Farrington."

The other turned on him with an oath.

"I want none of your opinions," he said gruffly. "You will never
understand how I feel about this child. I took her from her dead
father, who was one of my best friends, and I confess, that in the early
days the thought of exploiting her fortune did occur to me. But as the
years passed she grew towards me--a new and a beautiful influence in
life, Fall. It was something that I had never had before, a factor which
had never occurred in my stormy career. I grew to love the child, to
love her more than I love money, and that is saying a lot. I wanted to
do the right thing for her, and when my speculations were going wrong
and I had to borrow from her fortune I never had any doubt but what I
should be able to pay it back. When all the money went,"--his voice sank
until it was little more than a whisper,--"and I realized that I had
ruined the one human being in the world whom I loved, I took the step
which of all my crimes I have most regretted. I sent George Doughton out
of the way in order that I might scheme to marry Doris to the Tollington
millionaire. For I knew the man we were seeking was Doughton. I killed
him," he said defiantly, "for the sake of his son's wife. Oh, the irony
of it!" He raised his hand with a harsh laugh. "The comedy of it! As to
Poltavo," he went on more calmly, "I let him go because, as I say, I
wanted him to further my object. That he failed, or that he was remiss,
does not affect the argument. Doris is safely married," he mused; "if
she does not love her husband now, she will love him in time. She
respects Frank Doughton, and every day that passes will solidify that
respect. I know Doris, and I know something of her secret thoughts and
her secret wishes. She will forget me,"--his voice shook,--"please God
she will forget me."

He changed the subject quickly.

"Have you heard from Poltavo this morning?"

"Nothing at all," said Fall; "he has been communicating with somebody or
other, and the usual letters have been passing. Our man says that he has
a big coup on, but upon that Poltavo has not informed us."

"If I thought he was going to play us false----"

"What would you do?" asked Fall quietly. "He is out of our hands now."

There was a little buzz in one corner of the room, and Fall turned his
startled gaze upon the other.

"From the signal tower," he said. "I wonder what is wrong."

High above the house was one square solitary tower, in which, day and
night, a watcher was stationed. Fall went to the telephone and took down
the receiver. He spoke a few words and listened, then he hung up the
receiver again and turned to Farrington.

"Poltavo is in Great Bradley," he said; "one of our men has seen him and
signalled to the house."

"In Great Bradley!" Farrington's eyes narrowed. "What is he doing here?"

"What was his car doing here the other day," asked Fall, "when he
kidnapped Frank Doughton? It was here to throw suspicion on us and take
suspicion off himself, the most obvious thing in the world."

Again the buzzer sounded, and again Fall carried on a conversation with
the man on the roof in a low tone.

"Poltavo is on the downs," he said; "he has evidently come to meet
somebody; the look-out says he can see him from the tower through his
glasses, and that there is a man making his way towards him."

"Let us see for ourselves," said Farrington.

They passed out of the room into another, opened what appeared to be a
cupboard door, but which was in reality one of the innumerable elevators
with which the house was furnished, and for the working of which the
great electrical plant was so necessary.

They stepped into the lift, and in a few seconds had reached the
interior of the tower, with its glass-paned observation windows and its
telescopes. One of the foreign workmen, whom Farrington employed, was
carefully scrutinizing the distant downs through a telescope which stood
upon a large tripod.

"There he is," he said.

Farrington looked. There was no mistaking Poltavo, but who the other man
was, an old man doubled with age, his white beard floating in the wind,
Farrington could not say; he could only conjecture.

Dr. Fall, searching the downs with another telescope, was equally in the
dark.

"This is the intermediary," said Farrington at last.

They watched the meeting, saw the exchange of the letters, and
Farrington uttered a curse. Then suddenly he saw the other leap upon
Poltavo and witnessed the brief struggle on the ground. Saw the glitter
of handcuffs and turned with a white face to the doctor.

"My God!" he whispered. "Trapped!"

For the space of a few seconds they looked one at the other.

"Will he betray us?" asked Farrington, voicing the unspoken thoughts of
Fall.

"He will betray us as much as he can," said the other. "We must watch
and see what happens. If he takes him into town, we are lost."

"Is there any sign of police?" asked Farrington.

They scanned the horizon, but there was no evidence of a lurking force,
and they turned to watch T. B. Smith and his prisoner making their slow
way across the downs. For five minutes they stood watching, then Fall
uttered an exclamation.

"They are going to the cottage!" he said, and again the men's eyes met.

"Impossible," said Farrington, but there was a little glint in his eye
which spoke of the hope behind the word.

Again an interval of silence. Three pairs of eyes followed the men.

"It is the cottage!" said Fall. "Quick!"

In an instant the two men were in the lift and shooting downwards; they
did not stop till they reached the basement.

"You have a pistol?" asked Farrington.

Fall nodded. They quitted the lift and walked swiftly along a vaulted
corridor, lighted at intervals with lamps set in niches. On their way
they passed a door made in the solid wall to their left.

"We must get her out of this, if necessary," said Farrington in a low
voice. "She is not giving any trouble?"

Dr. Fall shook his head.

"A most tactful prisoner," he said, dryly.

At the end of the corridor was another door. Fall fitted a key and swung
open the heavy iron portal and the two men passed through to a darkened
chamber. Fall found the switch and illuminated the apartment. It was a
little room innocent of windows, and lit as all the rest of the basement
was by cornice lamps. In one corner was a grey-painted iron door. This
Fall pushed aside on its noiseless runners. There was another elevator
here. The two men stepped in and the lift sunk and sunk until it seemed
as though it would never come to the end. It stopped at last, and the
men stepped out into a rock-hewn gallery.

It was easy to see that this was one of the old disused galleries of the
old mine over which the house was built. Fall found the switch he sought
and instantly the corridor was flooded with bright light.

On a set of rails which ran the whole length of the gallery to a point
which was out of sight from where they stood, was a small trolley. It
was unlike the average trolley in that it was obviously electrically
driven. A third rail supplied the energy, and the controlling levers
were at the driver's hand.

Farrington climbed to the seat, and his companion followed, and with a
whirr of wheels and a splutter of sparks where the motor brush caught
the rail, the little trolley drove forward at full speed.

They slowed at the gentle curves, increased speed again when any
uninterrupted length of gallery gave them encouragement, and after five
minutes' travel Farrington pulled back the lever and applied the brake.
They stepped out into a huge chamber similar to that which they had just
left. There was the inevitable lift set, as it seemed, in the heart of
the rock, though in reality it was a bricked space. The two men entered
and the lift rose noiselessly.

"We will go up slowly," whispered Fall in the other's ear; "it will not
do to make a noise or to arouse any suspicions; we must not forget that
we have T. B. Smith to deal with."

Farrington nodded, and presently the lift stopped of its own accord.
They made no attempt to open whatever door was before them. They could
hear voices: one was T. B.'s, and the other was unmistakably Poltavo's,
and Poltavo was speaking.

Poltavo was offering in his eager way to betray the men who sat in the
darkness listening to his treachery. They heard the motor-car's arrival
outside, and presently T. B.'s voice announcing his temporary
retirement. They heard the slam of the door, and the key click in the
lock, and then Dr. Fall stepped forward, pressed a spring in the rough
woodwork in front of him and one of the panels of the room slid silently
back.

Poltavo did not see his visitors until they stood over him, then he read
in those hateful faces which were turned toward him an unmistakable
forecast of his doom.

"What do you want?" he almost whispered.

"Do not raise your voice," said Farrington in the same tone, "or you are
a dead man." He held the point of a knife at the other's throat.

"To where are you taking me?" asked Poltavo, ghastly white of face and
shaking from head to foot.

"We are taking you to a place where your opportunity for betraying us
will be a mighty small one," said Fall.

There was a horrible smile on his thin lips, and Poltavo, with a
premonition of what awaited him beyond the tunnel, forgot the menacing
knife at his throat and screamed.

Hands gripped him and strangled the cry as it escaped him. Something
heavy struck him behind the ear and he lost consciousness. He awoke to
find himself travelling smoothly along the rock gallery. He was half
lying, half reclining on Fall's knees. He did not attempt to move; he
knew now that he was in mortal peril of his life. No word was spoken
when he was dragged roughly from the car, placed in another elevator and
whirled upwards, emerging into a little chamber at the end of the
underground corridor which ran beneath the Secret House.

A door was opened and he was thrust in without a word. He heard the
clang of the steel door behind him, and the lights came on to show him
that once again he was in the underground room where he had been
confined before.

There was the table, there was the heavy chair, there in the far corner
of the room was the barred entrance to the other elevator. Anyway he was
free from the police; that was something. He was safe just so long as it
suited the book of Farrington and his friend to keep him safe. What
would they do? What excuse could he offer? They had overheard the
conversation between himself and T. B., he knew that, and cursed his
folly. He ought to have kept away from Moor Cottage. He knew there was
something sinister about the place, but T. B. should have known that
even better than he. Why had T. B. left him?

These and a thousand other thoughts shot through his mind as he paced
the vaulted apartment. They were in no hurry to feed him. He had almost
forgotten what time it was; whether it was day or night in that
underground vault into which no ray of sunlight ever penetrated. They
had left him with the handcuffs on his wrists; they would come and
relieve him of these encumbrances. What were their plans with him? He
felt his pockets carefully. T. B. had taken away the only weapon he had
had, and for the first time for many years Count Poltavo was unarmed.

His heart was beating with painful rapidity and his breath came
laboriously. He was terror-stricken. He turned to find the door through
which he had come, and to his surprise he could not see it. So far as he
could detect, the stone wall ran without a break from one end of the
apartment to the other. Escape could not lie that way; of that he was
satisfied. There was nothing to do but to wait, with whatever patience
he could summon, to discover their plans. He did not doubt that he was
to suffer. He had forfeited all right to their confidence, but if this
was to be the only consequence of his ill-doing he was not greatly
worried. Count Poltavo, as he had boasted before in this identical room,
had been in some tight corners and had faced death in many strange and
terrible guises, but the inevitability of doom was never so impressed
upon his mind as it was at this moment when he lay guarded by a hundred
secret forces in the tomb of the Secret House.

He had one hope, a faint one, that T. B. would discover the method of
his exit from the room in Moor Cottage and would track him here.

Evidently the occupants of the Secret House had the same fear, for even
here, in the quietness of his underground prison, Poltavo could hear
strange whining noises, rumbling, and groaning and grinding, as though
the whole of the house were changing its construction.

He had not long to wait for news. A corner lift came swiftly down and
Fall stepped briskly towards his prisoner.

"T. B. Smith is in the house," he said, "and is making an inspection; he
will be down here in a moment. In these circumstances I shall have to
betray one of the secrets of this house." He caught the other roughly by
the arm and half led, half dragged, him to a corner of the room.
Handcuffed as he was, Poltavo could offer no resistance. Dr. Fall
apparently only touched one portion of the wall, but he must have moved,
either with his foot or with his hand, some particularly powerful
spring, for a section of the stone wall swung backwards revealing a
black gap.

"Get in there," said Fall, and pushed him into the darkness.

A few moments later T. B. Smith, accompanied by three detectives,
inspected the room which Poltavo had left. There was no sign of the man,
no evidence of his having so recently been an occupant of his prison
house. For an interminable time Poltavo stood in the darkness. He found
he was in a small cell-like apartment with apparently no outlet save
that through which he had come.

He was able to breathe without difficulty, for the perfect system of
ventilation throughout the dungeons of the Secret House had been its
architect's greatest triumph.

It seemed hours that he waited there, though in reality it was less than
twenty minutes after his entrance that the door swung open again and he
was called out.

Farrington was in the room now, Farrington with his trusty lieutenant,
and behind them the one-eyed Italian desperado whom Poltavo remembered
seeing in the power house one day, when he had been allowed the
privilege of inspection.

Some slight change had been made in the room since he was there last.
Poltavo's nerves were in such a condition that he was sensitive to this
variation. He saw now what the change was. The table had been drawn back
leaving the chair where it was fixed.

Yes, it was a fixed chair, he remembered that and wondered why it had
been screwed to the wood block floor. Dr. Fall and the engineer grasped
him roughly and hurried him across the room, thrusting him into the
chair.

"What are you going to do?" asked Poltavo, white as death.

"That you shall see."

Deftly they strapped him to the chair; his wrists and elbows were
securely fastened to the arms, and his ankles to the legs of the massive
piece of furniture.

From where he sat Poltavo confronted Farrington, but the big man's
mask-like face did not move, nor his eyes waver as he surveyed his
treacherous prisoner. Then Fall knelt down and did something, and
Poltavo heard the ripping and tearing of cloth.

They were slitting up each trouser leg, and he could not understand why.

"Is this a joke?" he asked with a desperate attempt at airiness.

No reply was made. Poltavo watched his captors curiously. What was the
object of it all? The two men busy at the chair lifted a number of
curious-looking objects from the floor; they clamped one on each wrist,
and he felt the cold surface of some instrument pressing against each
calf. Still he did not realize the danger, or the grim determination of
these men whose secret he would have betrayed.

"Mr. Farrington," he appealed to the big man, "let us have an
understanding. I have played my game and lost."

"You have indeed," said Farrington.

They were the first words he had spoken.

"Give me enough to get out of the country," Poltavo appealed, "just the
money that I have in my pocket, and I promise you that I will never
trouble you again."

"My friend," said Farrington, "I have trusted you too long. You forced
yourself upon me when I did not desire you, you thwarted me at every
turn, you betrayed me whenever it was possible to betray me, or whenever
it was to your advantage to do so, and I am determined that you shall
have no other chance of doing me an injury."

"What is this foolery?" asked Poltavo, in a mixture of blind fear and
rage. They had unlocked the handcuffs and taken them off him, and now
for the first time Poltavo noticed that the curious bronze clamps on his
wrists were attached by thick green cords to a plug in the wall.

He shrieked aloud as he saw this, and the full horror of the situation
flashed upon him.

"My God," he screamed, "you are not going to kill me?"

Farrington nodded slowly.

"We are going to kill you painlessly, Poltavo," he said. "It was your
life or ours. We do not desire to cause you unnecessary suffering, but
here is the end of the adventure for you, my friend."

"You are not going to electrocute me?" croaked the man in the chair, in
a hoarse cracked voice. "Don't say that you are going to electrocute me,
Farrington! It is diabolical, it is terrible. Give me a chance of life!
Give me a pistol, give me a knife, but fight me fair. Treat me as you
will; hand me to the police, anything but this; for God's sake,
Farrington, don't do this!"

The doctor reached down and lifted a leather helmet from the floor and
placed it gently over the doomed man's head.

"Don't do it, Farrington." Poltavo's muffled voice came painfully from
behind the leather screen. "Don't! I swear I will not betray you."

Farrington made a little signal and the doctor walked to the wall and
placed his hand upon a black switch.

"I will not betray you," said the man in the chair in hollow tones.
"Give me a chance. I will not tell them anything that you----"

He did not speak again, for the black switch had been pressed down and
death came with merciful swiftness.

They stood watching the figure. A slight quivering of the hands and then
Farrington nodded and the doctor turned the switch over again.

Rapidly they unfastened the straps, and the limp thing which was once
human, with a brain to think and a capacity for life and love, slipped
out of the chair in an inanimate heap upon the ground.

So passed Ernesto Poltavo, an adventurer and a villain, in the prime of
his life.

Farrington looked down upon the body with sombre eyes and shrugged his
shoulders.

He had opened his mouth to speak and Fall had walked to the switchboard
and was about to put the deadly apparatus out of gear, when a sharp
voice made them both turn.

"Hands up!" it said.

The stone door, through which Poltavo had passed to his doom from the
corridor without, was wide open, and in the doorway stood T. B. and a
little behind him Ela, and in T. B.'s hand was a pistol.




CHAPTER XX


T. B. Smith's inspection of the Secret House had yielded nothing
satisfactory; he had not expected that it would; he was perfectly
satisfied that the keen, shrewd brains which dominated the menage would
remove any trace there was of foul play.

"Where now?" asked Ela, as they turned out of the house.

"Back to Moor Cottage," said T. B., climbing into the car. "I am certain
that we are on the verge of our big discovery. There is a way out of the
cottage by some underground chamber, a way by which first Lady Constance
and then Poltavo were smuggled, and if it is necessary I am going to
smash every panel in those two ground floor rooms, but I will find the
way in to Mr. Farrington's mystery house."

For half an hour the two men were engaged in the room from which
Poltavo had been taken. They probed with centre bits and gimlets into
every portion of the room.

The first discovery that they made was that the oaken panels of the
chamber were backed with sheet iron or steel.

"It is a hopeless job; we shall have to get another kind of smith here
to tear down all the panellings," said T. B., lighting the gloom of his
despair with a little flash of humour.

He fingered the tiny locket absently and opened it again.

"It is absurd," he laughed helplessly. "Here is the solution in these
simple words, and yet we brainy folk from the Yard cannot understand
them!"

"God sav the Keng!" said Ela ruefully. "I wonder how on earth that is
going to help us."

A gasp from T. B. made him turn his face to his chief.

T. B. Smith was pointing at the piano. In two strides he was across the
room, and sitting on the stool he lifted the cover and struck a chord.
The instrument sounded a little flat and apparently had not received the
attention of a tuner for some time.

"I am going to play 'God save the King,'" said T. B. with a light in
his eyes, "and I think something is going to happen."

Slowly he pounded forth the familiar tune; from beginning to end he
played it, and when he had finished he looked at Ela.

"Try it in another key," suggested Ela, and again T. B. played the
anthem. He was nearing the last few bars when there was a click and he
leapt up. One long panel had disappeared from the side of the wall. For
a moment the two men looked at one another. They were alone in the
house, although a policeman was within call. The main force was gathered
in the vicinity of the Secret House.

T. B. flashed the light of his indispensable and inseparable little
electric lamp into the dark interior.

"I will go in first and see what happens," he said.

"I think we will both go together," said Ela grimly.

"There is a switch here," said T. B.

He pulled it down and a small lamp glowed, illuminating a tiny lift
cage.

"And here I presume are the necessary controlling buttons," said T. B.,
pointing to a number of white discs; "we will try this one."

He pressed the button and instantly the cage began to fall. It came to
a standstill after a while and the men stepped out.

"Part of the old working," said T. B.; "a very ingenious idea."

He flashed his lamp over the walls to find the electrical connection.
They were here, as they were at the other end, perfectly accessible. An
instant later the long corridor was lighted up.

"By heavens," said T. B. admiringly, "they have even got an underground
tramway; look here!"

At this tiny terminus there were two branches of rails and a car was in
waiting. A few minutes later T. B. Smith had reached the other end of
the mine gallery and was seeking the second elevator.

"Here we are," he said--"everything run by electricity. I thought that
power house of Farrington's had a pretty stiff job, and now I see how
heavy is the load which it has to carry. Step carefully into this," he
continued, "and make a careful note of the way we are going. I think we
must be about a hundred feet below the level of the earth; just gauge it
roughly as we go up. Here we go."

He pressed a button and up went the lift. They passed out of the little
mine chamber, carefully propping back the swing door, and made their
way along the corridor.

"This looks like an apartment," said T. B., as he stopped before a
red-painted steel door in one of the walls. He pressed it gently, but it
did not yield. He made a further examination, but there was no keyhole
visible.

"This is either worked by a hidden spring or it does not work at all,"
he said in a low voice.

"If it is a spring," said Ela, "I will find it."

His sensitive hands went up and down the surface of the door and
presently they stopped.

"There is something which is little larger than a pin hole," he said. He
took from his pocket a general utility knife and slipped out a thin
steel needle. "Pipe cleaners may be very useful," he said, and pressed
the long slender bodkin into the aperture. Instantly, and without sound,
the door opened.

T. B. was the first to go in, revolver in hand. He found himself in a
room which, even if it were a prison, was a well-disguised prison. The
walls were hung with costly tapestry, the carpet under foot was thick
and velvety and the furniture which garnished the room was of a most
costly and luxurious description.

"Lady Constance!" gasped T. B. in surprise.

A woman who was sitting in a chair near the reading lamp rose quickly
and turned her startled gaze to the detective.

"Mr. Smith," she said, and ran towards him. "Oh, thank God you have
come!"

She grasped him by his two arms; she was half hysterical in that moment
of her release, and was babbling an incoherent string of words; a
description of her capture--her fear--her gratitude--all in an
inextricably confused rush of half completed phrases.

"Sit down, Lady Constance," said T. B. gently; "collect yourself and try
to remember--have you seen Poltavo?"

"Poltavo?" she said, startled into coherence. "No, is he here?"

"He is somewhere here," said T. B. "I am seeking for him now. Will you
stay here or will you come with us?"

"I would rather come with you," she said with a shiver.

They passed through the door together.

"Do all these doors open upon rooms similar to this?" asked T. B.

"I believe there are a number of underground cells," she answered in a
whisper, "but the principal one is that which is near." She pointed to
a red-painted door some twenty paces away from the one from which they
were emerging. There was another pause whilst Ela repeated his
examination of the door.

Apparently they all worked on the pick system, a method which medieval
conspirators favoured, and which the Italian workmen probably imported
from the land of their birth; a land which has given the world the
Borgias and the Medicis and the Visconti.

"Stay here," said T. B. in a low voice, and Lady Constance shrank back
against the wall.

Ela pressed in his little needle and again the result was satisfactory.
The door opened slowly and T. B. stepped in.

He stood for a moment trying to understand all that the terrible scene
signified. The limp body on the floor; the two remorseless men standing
close by; Farrington with folded arms and his eye glowering down upon
the dead man at his feet. Fall at the switchboard.

Then T. B.'s revolver rose swiftly.

"Hands up!" he said.

The words were hardly out of his mouth when the room was plunged in
darkness, his companion was flung violently backward as the electrical
control came into operation and the door slammed in Ela's face. He
pressed it without avail. He brought to his aid the little needle, but
this time the lock would not move.

Ela's face went chalk white.

"My God!" he gasped, "they've got T. B.!"

He stood for a moment in indecision. He had visualized the scene and
knew what fate would befall his chief.

"Back to the gallery," he said harshly, and led the way, holding the
woman's arm in support. He found his way without difficulty to the lift,
sprang into it, after Lady Constance, and pressed the button.... Now
they were speeding along the sparking rail ... now they were in the lift
rising swiftly to the room in Moor Cottage. T. B.'s car was outside.

"You had better come with me," said Ela quickly.

Lady Constance jumped into the car after him.

"To the Secret House," said Ela to the chauffeur, and as the car drove
forward he turned to the woman at his side.

"I will put you amongst your friends in a few moments," he said; "at
present I dare not risk the loss of a second."

"But what will they do?"

"I pretty well know what they will do," said Ela grimly. "Farrington is
playing his last hand, and T. B. Smith is to be his last victim."


In the darkness of the underground chamber T. B. faced his enemies,
striving to pierce the gloom, his finger in position upon the delicate
trigger of his automatic pistol.

"Do not move," he said softly; "I will shoot without any hesitation."

"There is no need to shoot," said the suave voice of the doctor; "the
lights went out, quite by accident, I assure you, and you and your
friends have no need to fear."

T. B. groped his way along the wall, his revolver extended. In the gloom
he felt rather than saw the bulky figure of the doctor and reached out
his hand gingerly.

Then something touched the outstretched palm, something that in ordinary
circumstances might have felt like the rough points of a bass broom. T.
B. was flung violently backwards and fell heavily to the ground.

"Get him into the chair quick," he heard Farrington's voice say. "That
was a good idea of yours, doctor."

"Just a sprayed wire," said Dr. Fall complacently; "it is a pretty
useful check upon a man. You took a wonderful assistant when you pressed
electricity to your aid, Farrington."

The lights were all on now, and T. B. was being strapped to the chair.
He had recovered from the shock, but he had recovered too late. In the
interval of his unconsciousness the body of Poltavo had been removed out
of his sight. They were doing to him all that they had done to Poltavo.
He felt the electrodes at his calf and on his wrists and clenched his
teeth, for he knew in what desperate strait he was.

"Well, Mr. Smith," said Farrington pleasantly, "I am afraid you have got
yourself into rather a mess. Where is the other man?" he asked quickly.
He looked at Fall, and the doctor returned his gaze.

"I forgot the other man," said Fall slowly; "in the corridor outside."
He went to the invisible door and it opened at his touch. He was out of
the room a few minutes, and returned looking old and drawn.

"He has got away," he said; "the woman has gone too."

Farrington nodded.

"What does he matter?" he asked roughly; "they know as much as they are
likely to know. Put the control on the door."

Fall turned over a switch and the other renewed his attention to T. B.

"You know exactly how you are situated, Mr. Smith," said Farrington,
"and now I am going to tell you exactly how you may escape from your
position."

"I shall be interested to learn," said T. B. coolly, "but I warn you
before you tell me that if my escape is contingent upon your own, then I
am afraid I am doomed to dissolution."

The other nodded.

"As you surmise," he said, "your escape is indeed contingent upon mine
and that of my friends. My terms to you are that you shall pass me out
of England. I know you are going to tell me that you have not the power,
but I am as well acquainted with the extraordinary privileges of your
department as you are. I know that you can take me out of the Secret
House and land me in Calais to-morrow morning, and there is not one man
throughout the length and breadth of England who will say you nay. I
offer you your life on condition that you do this, otherwise----"

"Otherwise?" asked T. B.

"Otherwise I shall kill you," said Farrington briefly, "just as I killed
Poltavo. You are the worst enemy I have and the most dangerous. I have
always marked you down as one whose attention was to be avoided, and I
shall probably kill you with less compunction because I know that but
for you I should not have been forced to live this mad dog's life that
has been mine for the past few months. You will be interested, Mr.
Smith, to learn that you nearly had me once. You see the whole wing of
the house in which Mr. Moole lies," he smiled, "works on the principle
of a huge elevator. The secret of the Secret House is really the secret
of perfectly arranged lifts; that is to say," he went on, "I can take my
room to the first floor and I can transport it to the fourth floor with
greater ease than you can carry a chair from a basement to an attic."

"I guessed that much," said T. B. "Do you realize that you might have
made a fortune as a practical electrician?"

Farrington smiled.

"I very much doubt it," he said coolly; "but my career and my wasted
opportunities are of less interest to me at the moment than my future
and yours. What are you going to do?"

T. B. smiled.

"I am going to do nothing," he said cheerfully, "unless it be that I am
going to die, for I can imagine no circumstance or danger that
threatens me or those I love best which would induce me to loose upon
the world such dangerous criminals as yourself and your
fellow-murderers. Your time has come, Farrington. Whether my time comes
a little sooner or later does not alter the fact that you are within a
month of your own death, whether you kill me or whether you let me go."

"You are a bold man to tell me that," said Farrington between his teeth.

T. B. saw from a glance at the blanched faces of the men that his words
had struck home.

"If you imagine you can escape," T. B. went on unconcernedly, "why, I
think you are wasting valuable time which might be better utilized, for
every moment of delay is a moment nearer to the gallows for both of
you."

"My friend, you are urging your own death," said Fall.

"As to that," said T. B., shrugging his shoulders, "I have no means of
foretelling, because I cannot look into the future any more than you,
and if it is the will of Providence that I should die in the execution
of my duty, I am as content to do so as any soldier upon the
battle-field, for it seems to me," he continued half to himself, "that
the arrayed enemies of society are more terrible, more formidable, and
more dangerous than the massed enemies that a soldier is called upon to
confront. They are only enemies for a period; for a time of madness
which is called 'war'; but you in your lives are enemies to society for
all time."

Fall exchanged glances with his superior, and Farrington nodded.

The doctor leant down and picked up the leather helmet, and placed it
with the same tender care that he had displayed before over the head of
his previous victim.

"I give you three minutes to decide," said Farrington.

"You are wasting three minutes," said the muffled voice of T. B. from
under the helmet.

Nevertheless Farrington took out his watch and held it in his unshaking
palm; for the space of a hundred and eighty seconds there was no sound
in the room save the loud ticking of the watch.

At the end of that time he replaced it in his pocket.

"Will you agree to do as I ask?" he said.

"No," was the reply with undiminished vigour.

"Let him have it," said Farrington savagely.

Dr. Fall put up his hand to the switch, and as he did so the lights
flickered for a moment and slowly their brilliancy diminished.

"Quick," said Farrington, and the doctor brought the switch over just
as the lights went out.

T. B. felt a sharp burning sensation that thrilled his whole being and
then lost consciousness.




CHAPTER XXI


There was a group of police officers about the gates of the Secret House
as the car bearing Ela and the woman came flying up.

The detective leapt out.

"They have taken T. B.," he said. He addressed a divisional inspector,
who was in charge of the corps.

"Close up the cordon," he went on, "and all men who are armed follow
me."

He raced up the garden path, but it was not toward the Secret House that
he directed his steps; he made a detour through a little plantation to
the power house.

A man stood at the door, a grimy-faced foreign workman who scowled at
the intruders. He tried to pull the sliding doors to their place, but
Ela caught the blue-coated man under the jaw and sent him sprawling into
the interior.

In an instant the detective was inside, confronting more scowling
workmen. A tall, good-looking man of middle age, evidently a decent
artisan, was in control, and he came forward, a spanner in his hand, to
repel the intruders.

But the pistol Ela carried was eloquent of his earnestness.

"Stand back," he said. "Are you in charge?"

The detective spoke Italian fluently.

"What does this mean, signor?" asked the foreman.

"It means that I give you three minutes to stop the dynamo."

"But that is impossible," said the other. "I cannot stop the dynamo; it
is against all orders."

"Stop that dynamo," hissed Ela between his teeth. "Stop it at once, or
you are a dead man."

The man hesitated, then walked to the great switchboard, brilliant with
a score of lights.

"I will not do it," he said sulkily. "There is the signal; give it
yourself."

A little red lamp suddenly glowed on the marble switchboard.

"What is that?" asked Ela.

"That is a signal from the lower rooms," said the man sullenly; "they
want more power."

Ela turned on the man with a snarl, raised his pistol and there was
murder in his eyes.

"Mercy!" gasped the Italian, and putting out his hand he grasped a long
red switch marked 'Danger' and pulled it over. Instantly all the lights
in the power house went dim, and the great whirling wheels slowed down
and stopped. Only the light of day illuminated the power house. Ela,
standing on the controlling platform, wiped his perspiring face with the
back of a hand which was shaking as though with ague.

"I wonder if I was in time?" he muttered.

The big machinery hall was now alive with detectives.

"Take charge of every man," Ela ordered; "see that nobody touches any of
these switches. Arrest stokers and keep them apart. Now you," he said,
addressing the foreman in Italian, "you seem a decent fellow, and I am
going to give you a chance of earning not only your freedom, but a
substantial reward. I am a police officer and I have come to make an
inspection of this house. You spoke of the lower rooms--do you know the
way there?"

The man hesitated.

"The lift cannot work, signor," he said, with a shrug of his shoulders,
"now that the electric current is stopped."

"Is there no other way?"

Again the man hesitated.

"There are stairs, signor," he stammered after a while, then continued
rapidly: "If this is a crime and Signor Moole is an anarchist, I know
nothing of it, I swear to you by the Virgin. I am an honest man from
Padua, and I have no knowledge of such things as your Excellency speaks
about."

Ela nodded.

"I am willing to believe that," he said in a milder tone. "Now, my
friend, you shall undo a great deal of mischief that has been done by
showing me the way to the underground rooms."

"I am at your service," said the man helplessly. "I call all men to
witness that I have done my best to carry out the instructions which the
padrone has given me."

He led the way out of the power house through a door which led to a
large stretch of private garden behind the main building, across a
well-kept lawn to an area basement which ran the whole length of the
house.

In this, at the far end, was a door, and the man opened it with a key
upon a bunch which he took from his pocket. They had to pass through two
more doors before they came to the spiral staircase which led down into
the gloomy depths beneath the Secret House.

To Ela's surprise they were illuminated and he feared that against his
orders the dynamo had been restarted, but the man reassured him.

"They are from the storage batteries," he said. "There is sufficient to
afford light all over the house, but not enough to give power."

The steps seemed never ending. Ela counted eighty-seven before at last
they came to a landing from which one door opened. The detective noticed
that the man employed the same method of entering here as he himself had
done. A bodkin slipped into an almost invisible hole produced the
mechanical unsealing of this doorway.

Ela stepped through the open door. Two lights burned dimly; he saw the
strapped figure in the chair and his heart sank. He went forward at a
run and Farrington was the first to hear him.

The big man turned, a revolver in his hand. There was a quick deafening
report, and another, and a third. Ela stood up unmoved, unharmed, but
Farrington, rocking as he staggered to the table, slid to the ground
with a bullet through his heart.

"Take that man," said Ela, and in an instant Fall was handcuffed and
secure.

Then Ela heard a silent sneeze and through the smoke from the revolver
shots the voice of T. B. Smith, saying: "A pity it takes such
ill-smelling powder to send our clever friend on his long journey."






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