CHAPTER XXI.THE BLACK VELVET TOQUEAcross Morsted Fen the day was breaking red and sullen. The brimming dykes, fringed with bare pollards, and the long sheets of water spread out across the lush meadows, threw back the fiery radiance of the sky from their gleaming surface. The tall poplars about the Dyke Inn stood out hard and clear in the ruddy light; beyond them the fen, stretched away to the flaming horizon gloomy and flat and desolate, with nothing higher than the stunted pollards visible against the lurid background.Upon the absolute silence of the scene there presently broke the steady humming of a car. A great light, paled by the dawn, came bobbing and sweeping, along the road that skirted the fen’s edge. A big open car drew up by the track and branched, off to the inn. Its four occupants consulted together for an instant and then alighted. Three of them were in plain clothes; the other was a soldier. The driver was also in khaki.“They’re astir, Mr. Matthews,” said one, of the plain clothes men, pointing towards the house, “see, there’s a light in the inn!”They followed the direction of his finger and saw a beam of yellow light gleaming from among the trees.“Get your guns out, boys!” said Matthews. “Give them a chance to put their hands up, and if they don’t obey, shoot!”Very swiftly but very quietly, the four men picked their way over the miry track to the little bridge leading to the yard in front of the inn. The light they had remarked shone from the inn door, a feeble, flickering light as of an expiring candle.Matthews, who was leading, halted and listened. Everything was quite still. Above their head the inn sign groaned uneasily as it was stirred by the fresh morning breeze.“You, Gordon,” whispered Matthews to the man behind him—they had advanced in Indian file—“take Bates and go round to the back. Harrison will go in by the front with me.”Even as he spoke a faint noise came from the interior of the house. The four men stood stock-still and listened. In the absolute stillness of the early morning, the sound fell distinctly on their ears. It was a step—a light step—descending the stairs.Gordon and the soldier detached themselves from the party as Matthews and the other plain clothes man crossed the bridge swiftly and went up to the inn door. Hardly had Matthews got his foot on the stone step of the threshold than, a piercing shriek resounded from the room quite close at hand. The next minute a flying figure burst out of the door and fell headlong into the arms of Matthews who was all but overbalanced by the force of the impact.He closed with the figure and grappled it firmly. His arms encountered a frail, light body, shaking from head to foot, enveloped in a cloak of some soft, thick material.“It’s a woman!” cried Matthews.“It’s Nur-el-Din!” exclaimed his companion in the same breath, seizing the woman by the arm.The dancer made no attempt to escape. She stood with bowed head, trembling violently, in a cowering, almost a crouching posture.Harrison, who had the woman by the arm, had turned her head so that he could see her face. She was deathly pale and her black eyes were wide open, the pupils dilated. Her teeth were chattering in her head. She seemed incapable of speech or motion.“Nur-el-Din?” exclaimed Matthews in accents of triumph. “Bring her in, Harrison, and let’s have a look at her!”But the woman recoiled in terror. She arched her body stiff, like a child in a passion, and strained every muscle to remain where she was cowering by the inn-door.“Come on, my girl,” said the man not unkindly, “don’t you ’ear wot the Guv’nor sez! In you go!”Then the girl screamed aloud.“No, no!” she cried, “not in that house! For the love of God, don’t take me back into that room! Ah! For pity’s sake, let me stay outside! Take me to prison but not, not into that house again!”She half fell on her knees in the mire, pleading, entreating, her body shaken by sobs.Then Harrison, who was an ex-Guardsman and a six-footer at that, plucked her off her feet and carried her, still struggling, still imploring with piteous cries, over the threshold into the house: Matthews followed behind.The shutters of the tap-room were still closed. Only a strip of the dirty floor, strewn with sawdust, was illuminated by a bar of reddish light from the daybreak outside. On the table a candle, burnt down to the socket of its brass candlestick, flared and puttered in a riot of running wax. Half in the bar of daylight from outside, half in the darkness beyond the open door, against which the flickering candlelight struggled feebly, lay the body of a yellow-faced, undersized man with a bullet wound through the temple.Without effort Harrison deposited his light burden on her feet by the table. Instantly, the girl fled, like some frightened animal of the woods, to the farthest corner of the room. Here she dropped sobbing on her knees, rocking herself to and fro in a sort of paroxysm of hysteria. Harrison moved quickly round the table after her; but he was checked by a cry from Matthews who was kneeling by the body.“Let her be,” said Matthews, “she’s scared of this and no wonder! Come here a minute, Harrison, and see if you know, this chap!”Harrison crossed the room and looked down at the still figure. He whistled softly.“My word!” he said, “but he copped it all right, sir! Ay, I know him well enough! He’s Rass, the landlord of this pub, that’s who he is, as harmless a sort of chap as ever was! Who did it, d’you think, sir?”Matthews, who had been going through the dead man’s pockets, now rose to his feet.“Nothing worth writing home about there,” he said half aloud. Then to Harrison, he added: “That’s what we’ve got to discover... hullo, who’s this?”The door leading from the bar to the tap-room was thrust open. Gordon put his head in.“I left Bates on guard outside, sir,” he said in answer to an interrogatory glance from Matthews, “I’ve been all over the ground floor and there’s not a soul here...”He checked himself suddenly.“God bless my soul!” he exclaimed, his eyes on the figure crouching in the corner, “you don’t mean to say you’ve got her? A pretty dance she led Dug and myself! Well, sir, it looks to me like a good night’s work!”.Matthews smiled a self-satisfied smile.“I fancy the Chief will be pleased,” he said, “though the rest of ’em seem to have given us the slip. Gordon, you might take a look upstairs—that door in the corner leads to the upper rooms, I fancy—whilst I’m telephoning to Mr. Okewood. He must know about this without delay. You, Harrison, keep an eye on the girl!”He went through the door leading into the bar, and they heard him speaking on the telephone which hung on the wall behind the counter. He returned presently with a white tablecloth which he threw over the prostrate figure on the floor.Then he turned to the dancer.“Stand up,” he said sternly, “I want to speak to you.”Nur-el-Din cast a frightened glance over her shoulder at the floor beside the table where Rass lay. On seeing the white pall that hid him from view, she became somewhat reassured. She rose unsteadily to her feet and stood facing Matthews.“In virtue of the powers conferred upon me by the Defence of the Realm Acts, I arrest you for espionage... Matthews rolled off in glib, official gabble the formula of arrest ending with the usual caution that anything the prisoner might say might be used against her at her trial. Then he said to Harrison:“Better put them on her, Harrison!”The plain clothes man took a pace forward and touched the dancer’s slender wrists, there was a click and she was handcuffed.“Now take her in there,” said Matthews pointing to the bar. “There’s no exit except by this room. And don’t take your eyes off her. You understand? Mr. Okewood will be along presently with a female searcher.”“Sir!” said the plain clothes man with military precision and touched the dancer on the shoulder. Without a word she turned and followed him into the bar.Gordon entered by the door at the end of the room.“I’d like you to have a look upstairs, sir,” he said to Matthews, “there’s not a soul in the house, but somebody has been locked up in one of the rooms. The door is still locked but one of the panels has been forced out. I think you ought to see it!”The two men passed out of the tap-room together, and mounted the stairs. On the landing Matthews paused a moment to glance out of the window on to the bleak and inhospitable fen which was almost obscured from view by a heavy drizzle of rain.“Brr!” said Mr. Matthews, “what a horrible place!”Looking up the staircase from the landing, they could see that one of the panels of the door facing the head of the stairs had been pressed out and lay on the ground. They passed up the stairs and Matthews, putting one arm and his head through the opening, found himself gazing into that selfsame ugly sitting room where Desmond had talked with Nur-el-Din.A couple of vigorous heaves burst the fastening of the door. The sitting-room was in the wildest confusion. The doors of the sideboard stood wide with its contents scattered higgledy-piggledy on the carpet. A chest of drawers in the corner had been ransacked, some of the drawers having been taken bodily out and emptied on the floor.The door leading to the inner room stood open and showed that a similar search had been conducted there as well. The inner room proved to be a bare white-washed place, very plainly furnished as a bedroom. On the floor stood a small attaché case, and beside it a little heap of miscellaneous articles such as a woman would take away with her for a weekend, a crêpe-de-chine nightdress, a dainty pair of bedroom slippers and some silver-mounted toilet fittings. From these things Matthews judged that this had been Nur-el-Din’s bedroom.The two men spent a long time going through the litter with which the floor in the bedroom and sitting room was strewed. But their labors were vain, and they turned their attention to the remaining rooms, of which there were three.The first room they visited, adjoining Nur-el-Din’s bedroom, was scarcely better than an attic. It contained in the way of furniture little else than a truckle-bed, a washstand, a table and a chair. Women’s clothes were hanging on hooks behind the door. The place looked like a servant’s bedroom.They pursued their search. Across the corridor two rooms stood side by side. One proved to be Rass’s. His clothes lay about the room, and on a table in the corner, where writing materials stood, were various letters and bills made out in his name.The other room had also been occupied; for the bed was made and turned back for the night and there were clean towels on the washstand. But there was no clue as to its occupant save for a double-barreled gun which stood in the corner. It had evidently been recently used; for fresh earth was adhering to the stock and the barrel, though otherwise clean, showed traces of freshly-burnt powder.There being nothing further to glean upstairs, the two men went down to the tap-room again. As Matthews came through the door leading from the staircase his eye caught a dark object which lay on the floor under the long table. He fished it out with his stick.It was a small black velvet toque with a band of white and black silk flowers round it. In one part the white flowers were besmeared with a dark brown stain.Matthews stared at the little hat in his hand with puckered brows. Then he called to Gordon.“Do you know that hat?” he asked, holding it up for the man to see.Gordon shook his head.“I might have seen it,” he replied, “but I don’t take much account of such things, Mr. Matthews, being a married man...”“Tut, tut,” fussed Matthews, “I think you have seen it. Come, think of the office for a minute!”“Of the office?” repeated Gordon. Then he exclaimed suddenly:“Miss Mackwayte!”“Exactly,” answered Matthews, “it’s her hat, I recall it perfectly. She wore it very often to the office. Look at the blood on it!”He put the hat down on the table and ran into the bar where Nur-el-Din sat immobile on her chair, wrapped in a big overcoat of some soft blanket cloth in dark green, her chin sunk on her breast.Matthews called up the Mill House and asked for Francis Okewood. When he mentioned the finding of Barbara Mackwayte’s hat, the dancer raised her head and cast a frightened glance at Matthews. But she said nothing and when Matthews turned from the telephone to go back to the tap-room she had resumed her former listless attitude.Matthews and Gordon made a thorough search of the kitchen and back premises without finding anything of note. They had just finished when the sound of a car outside attracted their attention. On the road beyond the little bridge outside the inn Francis and Desmond Okewood were standing, helping a woman to alight. Francis was still wearing his scarecrow-like apparel, while Desmond, with his beard and pale face and bandaged head, looked singularly unlike the trim Brigade Major who had come home on leave only a week or so before.Matthews went out to meet them and, addressing the woman—a brisk-looking person--as Mrs. Butterworth, informed her that it was shocking weather. Then he led the way into the inn.The first thing that Desmond saw was the little toque with the brown stain on its flowered band lying on the table. Francis picked it up, turned it over and laid it down again.“Where did you find it?” he asked Matthews. The latter informed him of the circumstances of the discovery. Then Francis, sending the searcher in to Nur-el-Din in the bar, pointed to the body on the floor.“Let’s have a look at that!” he said.Matthews removed the covering and the three men gazed at the set face of the dead man. There was a clean bullet wound in the right temple. Matthews showed the papers he had taken off the body and exchanged a few, words in a low tone with Francis. There is something about the presence of death which impels respect whatever the circumstances.Five minutes later Mrs. Butterworth came out of the bar. In her hands she held a miscellaneous assortment of articles, a small gold chain purse, a pair of gloves, a gold cigarette case, a tiny handkerchief, and a long blue envelope. She put all the articles down on the tables save the envelope which she handed to Francis.“This was in the lining of her overcoat, sir,” she said.Francis took the envelope and broke the seal. He drew out half a dozen sheets of thin paper, folded lengthwise. Leisurely he unfolded them, but he had hardly glanced at the topmost sheet than he turned to the next and the next until he had run through the whole bunch. Desmond, peering over his shoulder, caught a glimpse of rows of figures, very neatly set out in a round hand and knew that he was looking at a message in cipher code.The door at the end of the tap-room was flung open and a soldier came in quickly.He stopped irresolute on seeing the group.“Well, Bates,” said Matthews.“There’s a woman lying dead in the cellar back yonder,” said the man, jerking his thumb over his shoulder.“The cellar?” cried Matthews.“Yes, sir... I think you must ha’ overlooked it.”Francis, Desmond and Matthews exchanged a brief glance. A name was on the lips of each one of them but none dared speak it. Then, leaving Harrison and Mrs. Butterworth with Nur-el-Din, the three men followed the soldier and hurriedly quitted the room.
Across Morsted Fen the day was breaking red and sullen. The brimming dykes, fringed with bare pollards, and the long sheets of water spread out across the lush meadows, threw back the fiery radiance of the sky from their gleaming surface. The tall poplars about the Dyke Inn stood out hard and clear in the ruddy light; beyond them the fen, stretched away to the flaming horizon gloomy and flat and desolate, with nothing higher than the stunted pollards visible against the lurid background.
Upon the absolute silence of the scene there presently broke the steady humming of a car. A great light, paled by the dawn, came bobbing and sweeping, along the road that skirted the fen’s edge. A big open car drew up by the track and branched, off to the inn. Its four occupants consulted together for an instant and then alighted. Three of them were in plain clothes; the other was a soldier. The driver was also in khaki.
“They’re astir, Mr. Matthews,” said one, of the plain clothes men, pointing towards the house, “see, there’s a light in the inn!”
They followed the direction of his finger and saw a beam of yellow light gleaming from among the trees.
“Get your guns out, boys!” said Matthews. “Give them a chance to put their hands up, and if they don’t obey, shoot!”
Very swiftly but very quietly, the four men picked their way over the miry track to the little bridge leading to the yard in front of the inn. The light they had remarked shone from the inn door, a feeble, flickering light as of an expiring candle.
Matthews, who was leading, halted and listened. Everything was quite still. Above their head the inn sign groaned uneasily as it was stirred by the fresh morning breeze.
“You, Gordon,” whispered Matthews to the man behind him—they had advanced in Indian file—“take Bates and go round to the back. Harrison will go in by the front with me.”
Even as he spoke a faint noise came from the interior of the house. The four men stood stock-still and listened. In the absolute stillness of the early morning, the sound fell distinctly on their ears. It was a step—a light step—descending the stairs.
Gordon and the soldier detached themselves from the party as Matthews and the other plain clothes man crossed the bridge swiftly and went up to the inn door. Hardly had Matthews got his foot on the stone step of the threshold than, a piercing shriek resounded from the room quite close at hand. The next minute a flying figure burst out of the door and fell headlong into the arms of Matthews who was all but overbalanced by the force of the impact.
He closed with the figure and grappled it firmly. His arms encountered a frail, light body, shaking from head to foot, enveloped in a cloak of some soft, thick material.
“It’s a woman!” cried Matthews.
“It’s Nur-el-Din!” exclaimed his companion in the same breath, seizing the woman by the arm.
The dancer made no attempt to escape. She stood with bowed head, trembling violently, in a cowering, almost a crouching posture.
Harrison, who had the woman by the arm, had turned her head so that he could see her face. She was deathly pale and her black eyes were wide open, the pupils dilated. Her teeth were chattering in her head. She seemed incapable of speech or motion.
“Nur-el-Din?” exclaimed Matthews in accents of triumph. “Bring her in, Harrison, and let’s have a look at her!”
But the woman recoiled in terror. She arched her body stiff, like a child in a passion, and strained every muscle to remain where she was cowering by the inn-door.
“Come on, my girl,” said the man not unkindly, “don’t you ’ear wot the Guv’nor sez! In you go!”
Then the girl screamed aloud.
“No, no!” she cried, “not in that house! For the love of God, don’t take me back into that room! Ah! For pity’s sake, let me stay outside! Take me to prison but not, not into that house again!”
She half fell on her knees in the mire, pleading, entreating, her body shaken by sobs.
Then Harrison, who was an ex-Guardsman and a six-footer at that, plucked her off her feet and carried her, still struggling, still imploring with piteous cries, over the threshold into the house: Matthews followed behind.
The shutters of the tap-room were still closed. Only a strip of the dirty floor, strewn with sawdust, was illuminated by a bar of reddish light from the daybreak outside. On the table a candle, burnt down to the socket of its brass candlestick, flared and puttered in a riot of running wax. Half in the bar of daylight from outside, half in the darkness beyond the open door, against which the flickering candlelight struggled feebly, lay the body of a yellow-faced, undersized man with a bullet wound through the temple.
Without effort Harrison deposited his light burden on her feet by the table. Instantly, the girl fled, like some frightened animal of the woods, to the farthest corner of the room. Here she dropped sobbing on her knees, rocking herself to and fro in a sort of paroxysm of hysteria. Harrison moved quickly round the table after her; but he was checked by a cry from Matthews who was kneeling by the body.
“Let her be,” said Matthews, “she’s scared of this and no wonder! Come here a minute, Harrison, and see if you know, this chap!”
Harrison crossed the room and looked down at the still figure. He whistled softly.
“My word!” he said, “but he copped it all right, sir! Ay, I know him well enough! He’s Rass, the landlord of this pub, that’s who he is, as harmless a sort of chap as ever was! Who did it, d’you think, sir?”
Matthews, who had been going through the dead man’s pockets, now rose to his feet.
“Nothing worth writing home about there,” he said half aloud. Then to Harrison, he added: “That’s what we’ve got to discover... hullo, who’s this?”
The door leading from the bar to the tap-room was thrust open. Gordon put his head in.
“I left Bates on guard outside, sir,” he said in answer to an interrogatory glance from Matthews, “I’ve been all over the ground floor and there’s not a soul here...”
He checked himself suddenly.
“God bless my soul!” he exclaimed, his eyes on the figure crouching in the corner, “you don’t mean to say you’ve got her? A pretty dance she led Dug and myself! Well, sir, it looks to me like a good night’s work!”.
Matthews smiled a self-satisfied smile.
“I fancy the Chief will be pleased,” he said, “though the rest of ’em seem to have given us the slip. Gordon, you might take a look upstairs—that door in the corner leads to the upper rooms, I fancy—whilst I’m telephoning to Mr. Okewood. He must know about this without delay. You, Harrison, keep an eye on the girl!”
He went through the door leading into the bar, and they heard him speaking on the telephone which hung on the wall behind the counter. He returned presently with a white tablecloth which he threw over the prostrate figure on the floor.
Then he turned to the dancer.
“Stand up,” he said sternly, “I want to speak to you.”
Nur-el-Din cast a frightened glance over her shoulder at the floor beside the table where Rass lay. On seeing the white pall that hid him from view, she became somewhat reassured. She rose unsteadily to her feet and stood facing Matthews.
“In virtue of the powers conferred upon me by the Defence of the Realm Acts, I arrest you for espionage... Matthews rolled off in glib, official gabble the formula of arrest ending with the usual caution that anything the prisoner might say might be used against her at her trial. Then he said to Harrison:
“Better put them on her, Harrison!”
The plain clothes man took a pace forward and touched the dancer’s slender wrists, there was a click and she was handcuffed.
“Now take her in there,” said Matthews pointing to the bar. “There’s no exit except by this room. And don’t take your eyes off her. You understand? Mr. Okewood will be along presently with a female searcher.”
“Sir!” said the plain clothes man with military precision and touched the dancer on the shoulder. Without a word she turned and followed him into the bar.
Gordon entered by the door at the end of the room.
“I’d like you to have a look upstairs, sir,” he said to Matthews, “there’s not a soul in the house, but somebody has been locked up in one of the rooms. The door is still locked but one of the panels has been forced out. I think you ought to see it!”
The two men passed out of the tap-room together, and mounted the stairs. On the landing Matthews paused a moment to glance out of the window on to the bleak and inhospitable fen which was almost obscured from view by a heavy drizzle of rain.
“Brr!” said Mr. Matthews, “what a horrible place!”
Looking up the staircase from the landing, they could see that one of the panels of the door facing the head of the stairs had been pressed out and lay on the ground. They passed up the stairs and Matthews, putting one arm and his head through the opening, found himself gazing into that selfsame ugly sitting room where Desmond had talked with Nur-el-Din.
A couple of vigorous heaves burst the fastening of the door. The sitting-room was in the wildest confusion. The doors of the sideboard stood wide with its contents scattered higgledy-piggledy on the carpet. A chest of drawers in the corner had been ransacked, some of the drawers having been taken bodily out and emptied on the floor.
The door leading to the inner room stood open and showed that a similar search had been conducted there as well. The inner room proved to be a bare white-washed place, very plainly furnished as a bedroom. On the floor stood a small attaché case, and beside it a little heap of miscellaneous articles such as a woman would take away with her for a weekend, a crêpe-de-chine nightdress, a dainty pair of bedroom slippers and some silver-mounted toilet fittings. From these things Matthews judged that this had been Nur-el-Din’s bedroom.
The two men spent a long time going through the litter with which the floor in the bedroom and sitting room was strewed. But their labors were vain, and they turned their attention to the remaining rooms, of which there were three.
The first room they visited, adjoining Nur-el-Din’s bedroom, was scarcely better than an attic. It contained in the way of furniture little else than a truckle-bed, a washstand, a table and a chair. Women’s clothes were hanging on hooks behind the door. The place looked like a servant’s bedroom.
They pursued their search. Across the corridor two rooms stood side by side. One proved to be Rass’s. His clothes lay about the room, and on a table in the corner, where writing materials stood, were various letters and bills made out in his name.
The other room had also been occupied; for the bed was made and turned back for the night and there were clean towels on the washstand. But there was no clue as to its occupant save for a double-barreled gun which stood in the corner. It had evidently been recently used; for fresh earth was adhering to the stock and the barrel, though otherwise clean, showed traces of freshly-burnt powder.
There being nothing further to glean upstairs, the two men went down to the tap-room again. As Matthews came through the door leading from the staircase his eye caught a dark object which lay on the floor under the long table. He fished it out with his stick.
It was a small black velvet toque with a band of white and black silk flowers round it. In one part the white flowers were besmeared with a dark brown stain.
Matthews stared at the little hat in his hand with puckered brows. Then he called to Gordon.
“Do you know that hat?” he asked, holding it up for the man to see.
Gordon shook his head.
“I might have seen it,” he replied, “but I don’t take much account of such things, Mr. Matthews, being a married man...”
“Tut, tut,” fussed Matthews, “I think you have seen it. Come, think of the office for a minute!”
“Of the office?” repeated Gordon. Then he exclaimed suddenly:
“Miss Mackwayte!”
“Exactly,” answered Matthews, “it’s her hat, I recall it perfectly. She wore it very often to the office. Look at the blood on it!”
He put the hat down on the table and ran into the bar where Nur-el-Din sat immobile on her chair, wrapped in a big overcoat of some soft blanket cloth in dark green, her chin sunk on her breast.
Matthews called up the Mill House and asked for Francis Okewood. When he mentioned the finding of Barbara Mackwayte’s hat, the dancer raised her head and cast a frightened glance at Matthews. But she said nothing and when Matthews turned from the telephone to go back to the tap-room she had resumed her former listless attitude.
Matthews and Gordon made a thorough search of the kitchen and back premises without finding anything of note. They had just finished when the sound of a car outside attracted their attention. On the road beyond the little bridge outside the inn Francis and Desmond Okewood were standing, helping a woman to alight. Francis was still wearing his scarecrow-like apparel, while Desmond, with his beard and pale face and bandaged head, looked singularly unlike the trim Brigade Major who had come home on leave only a week or so before.
Matthews went out to meet them and, addressing the woman—a brisk-looking person--as Mrs. Butterworth, informed her that it was shocking weather. Then he led the way into the inn.
The first thing that Desmond saw was the little toque with the brown stain on its flowered band lying on the table. Francis picked it up, turned it over and laid it down again.
“Where did you find it?” he asked Matthews. The latter informed him of the circumstances of the discovery. Then Francis, sending the searcher in to Nur-el-Din in the bar, pointed to the body on the floor.
“Let’s have a look at that!” he said.
Matthews removed the covering and the three men gazed at the set face of the dead man. There was a clean bullet wound in the right temple. Matthews showed the papers he had taken off the body and exchanged a few, words in a low tone with Francis. There is something about the presence of death which impels respect whatever the circumstances.
Five minutes later Mrs. Butterworth came out of the bar. In her hands she held a miscellaneous assortment of articles, a small gold chain purse, a pair of gloves, a gold cigarette case, a tiny handkerchief, and a long blue envelope. She put all the articles down on the tables save the envelope which she handed to Francis.
“This was in the lining of her overcoat, sir,” she said.
Francis took the envelope and broke the seal. He drew out half a dozen sheets of thin paper, folded lengthwise. Leisurely he unfolded them, but he had hardly glanced at the topmost sheet than he turned to the next and the next until he had run through the whole bunch. Desmond, peering over his shoulder, caught a glimpse of rows of figures, very neatly set out in a round hand and knew that he was looking at a message in cipher code.
The door at the end of the tap-room was flung open and a soldier came in quickly.
He stopped irresolute on seeing the group.
“Well, Bates,” said Matthews.
“There’s a woman lying dead in the cellar back yonder,” said the man, jerking his thumb over his shoulder.
“The cellar?” cried Matthews.
“Yes, sir... I think you must ha’ overlooked it.”
Francis, Desmond and Matthews exchanged a brief glance. A name was on the lips of each one of them but none dared speak it. Then, leaving Harrison and Mrs. Butterworth with Nur-el-Din, the three men followed the soldier and hurriedly quitted the room.