CHAPTER XXXIXMICHAEL KNOWS FOR SURE
Itwas that same voice that had brought Michael Brixan racing across the garden to the postern gate. A car stood outside, its lights dimmed. Standing by its bonnet was a frightened little brown man who had brought the machine to the place.
“Where is your master?” asked Michael quickly.
The man pointed.
“He went that way,” he quavered. “There was a devil in the big machine—it would not move when he stamped on the little pedal.”
Michael guessed what had happened. At the last moment, by one of those queer mischances which haunt the just and the unjust, the engine had failed him and he had fled on foot.
“Which way did he go?”
Again the man pointed.
“He ran,” he said simply.
Michael turned to the detective who was with him.
“Stay here: he may return. Arrest him immediately and put the irons on him. He’s probably armed, and he may be suicidal; we can’t afford to take any risks.”
He had been so often across what he had named the “Back Field” that he could find his way blindfolded, and he ran at top speed till he came to the stile and to the road. Sir Gregory was nowhere in sight. Fifty yards along the road, the lights gleamed cheerily from an upper window in Mr. Longvale’s house, and Michael bent his footsteps in that direction.
Still no sight of the man, and he turned through the gate and knocked at the door, which was almost immediately opened by the old gentleman himself. He wore a silken gown, tied with a sash about the middle, a picture of comfort, Michael thought.
“Who’s that?” asked Mr. Sampson Longvale, peering out into the darkness. “Why, bless my life, it’s Mr. Brixan, the officer of the law! Come in, come in, sir.”
He opened the door wide and Michael passed into the sitting-room, with its inevitable two candles, augmented now by a small silver reading-lamp that burnt some sort of petrol vapour.
“No trouble at the Towers, I trust?” said Mr. Longvale anxiously.
“There was a little trouble,” said Michael carefully. “Have you by any chance seen Sir Gregory Penne?”
The old man shook his head.
“I found the night rather too chilly for my usual garden ramble,” he said, “so I’ve seen none of the exciting events which seem inevitably to accompany the hours of darkness in these times. Has anything happened to him?”
“I hope not,” said Michael quietly. “I hope, for everybody’s sake, that—nothing has happened to him.”
He walked across and leant his elbows on the mantelpiece, looking up at the painting above his head.
“Do you admire my relative?” beamed Mr. Longvale.
“I don’t know that I admire him. He was certainly a wonderfully handsome old gentleman.”
Mr. Longvale inclined his head.
“You have read his memoirs?”
Michael nodded, and the old man did not seem in any way surprised.
“Yes, I have read what purport to be his memoirs,” said Michael quietly, “but latter-day opinion is that they are not authentic.”
Mr. Longvale shrugged his shoulders.
“Personally, I believe every word of them,” he said. “My uncle was a man of considerable education.”
It would have amazed Jack Knebworth to know that the man who had rushed hotfoot from the tower in search of a possible murderer, was at that moment calmly discussing biography; yet such was the incongruous, unbelievable fact.
“I sometimes feel that you think too much about your uncle, Mr. Longvale,” said Michael gently.
The old gentleman frowned.
“You mean——?”
“I mean that such a subject may become an obsession and a very unhealthy obsession, and such hero-worship may lead a man to do things which no sane man would do.”
Longvale looked at him in genuine astonishment.
“Can one do better than imitate the deeds of the great?” he asked.
“Not if your sense of values hasn’t got all tangled up, and you ascribe to him virtues which are not virtues—unless duty is a virtue—and confuse that which is great with that which is terrible.”
Michael turned and, resting his palms on the table, looked across to the old man who confronted him.
“I want you to come with me into Chichester this evening.”
“Why?” The question was asked bluntly.
“Because I think you’re a sick man, that you ought to have care.”
The old man laughed and drew himself even more erect.
“Sick? I was never better in my life, my dear sir, never fitter, never stronger!”
And he looked all that he said. His height, the breadth of his shoulders, the healthy glow of his cheeks, all spoke of physical fitness.
A long pause, and then:
“Where is Gregory Penne?” asked Michael, emphasizing every word.
“I haven’t the slightest idea.”
The old man’s eyes met his without wavering.
“We were talking about my great-uncle. You know him, of course?” he asked.
“I knew him the first time I saw his picture, and I thought I had betrayed my knowledge, but apparently I did not. Your great-uncle”—Michael spoke deliberately—“was Sanson, otherwise Longval, hereditary executioner of France!”
Such a silence followed that the ticking of a distant clock sounded distinctly.
“Your uncle has many achievements to his credit. He hanged three men on a gallows sixty feet high, unless my memory is at fault. His hand struck off the head of Louis of France and his consort Marie Antoinette.”
The look of pride in the old man’s face was startling. His eyes kindled, he seemed to grow in height.
“By what fantastic freak of fate you come to have settled in England, what queer kink of mind decided you secretly to carry on the profession of Sanson and seek far and wide for poor, helpless wretches to destroy, I do not know.”
Michael did not raise his voice, he spoke in a calm, conversational tone; and in the same way did Longvale reply.
“Is it not better,” he said gently, “that a man should pass out of life through no act of his own, than that he should commit the unpardonable crime of self-murder? Have I not been a benefactor to men who dared not take their own lives?”
“To Lawley Foss?” suggested Michael, his grave eyes fixed on the other.
“He was a traitor, a vulgar blackmailer, a man who sought to use the knowledge which had accidentally come to him, to extract money from me.”
“Where is Gregory Penne?”
A slow smile dawned on the man’s face.
“You will not believe me? That is ungentle, sir! I have not seen Sir Gregory.”
Michael pointed to the hearth, where a cigarette was still smouldering.
“There is that,” he said. “There are his muddy footprints on the carpet of this room. There is the cry I heard. Where is he?”
Within reach of his hand was his heavy-calibred Browning. A move on the old man’s part, and he would lie maimed on the ground. Michael was dealing with a homicidal lunatic of the most dangerous type, and would not hesitate to shoot.
But the old man showed no sign of antagonism. His voice was gentleness itself. He seemed to feel and express a pride in crimes which, to his brain, were not crimes at all.
“If you really wish me to go into Chichester with you to-night, of course I will go,” he said. “You may be right in your own estimation, even in the estimation of your superiors, but, in ending my work, you are rendering a cruel disservice to miserable humanity, to serve which I have spent thousands of pounds. But I bear no malice.”
He took a bottle from the long oaken buffet against the wall, selected two glasses with scrupulous care, and filled them from the bottle.
“We will drink our mutual good health,” he said with his old courtesy, and, lifting his glass to his lips, drank it with that show of enjoyment with which the old-time lovers of wine marked their approval of rare vintages.
“You’re not drinking?” he said in surprise.
“Somebody else has drunk.”
There was a glass half empty on the buffet: Michael saw it for the first time.
“He did not seem to enjoy the wine.”
Mr. Longvale sighed.
“Very few people understand wine,” he said, dusting a speck from his coat. Then, drawing a silk handkerchief from his pocket, he stooped and dusted his boots daintily.
Michael was standing on a strip of hearth-rug in front of the fireplace, his hand on his gun, tense but prepared for the moment of trial. Whence the danger would come, what form it would take, he could not guess. But danger was there—danger terrible and ruthless, emphasized rather than relieved by the suavity of the old man’s tone—he felt in the creep of his flesh.
“You see, my dear sir,” Longvale went on, still dusting his boots.
And then, before Michael could realize what had happened, he had grasped the end of the rug on which the detective was standing and pulled it with a quick jerk toward him. Before he could balance himself, Michael had fallen with a crash to the floor, his head striking the oaken panelling, his pistol sliding along the polished floor. In a flash, the old man was on him, had flung him over on his face and dragged his hands behind him. Michael tried to struggle, but he was as a child in that powerful grip, placed at such a disadvantage as he was. He felt the touch of cold steel on his wrists, there was a click, and, exerting all his strength, he tried to pull his other hand away. But gradually, slowly, it was forced back, and the second cuff snapped.
There were footsteps on the path outside the cottage. The old man straightened himself to pull off his silken gown and wrapped it round and round the detective’s head, and then a knock came at the door. One glance to see that his prisoner was safe, and Longvale extinguished the lamp, blew out one of the candles, and carried the other into the passage. He was in his shirt-sleeves, and the Scotland Yard officer, who was the caller, apologized for disturbing a man who had apparently been brought down from his bedroom to answer the knock.
“Have you seen Mr. Brixan?”
“Mr. Brixan? Yes, he was here a few minutes ago. He went on to Chichester.”
Michael heard the voices, but could not distinguish what was being said. The silken wrapper about his head was suffocating him, and he was losing his senses when the old man came back alone, unfastened the gown, and put it on himself.
“If you make a noise I will sew your lips together,” he said, so naturally and good-naturedly that it seemed impossible he would carry his threat into execution. But Michael knew that he was giving chapter and verse; he was threatening that which his ancestor had often performed. That beautiful old man, nicknamed by the gallants of Louis’ court “Monsieur de Paris,” had broken and hanged and beheaded, but he had also tortured men. There were smoke-blackened rooms in the old Bastille where that venerable old hangman had performed nameless duties without blenching.
“I am sorry in many ways that you must go on,” said the old man, with genuine regret in his voice. “You are a young man for whom I have a great deal of respect. The law to me is sacred, and its officers have an especially privileged place in my affections.”
He pulled open a drawer of the buffet and took out a large serviette, folded it with great care and fixed it tightly about Michael’s mouth. Then he raised him up and sat him on a chair.
“If I were a young and agile man, I would have a jest which would have pleased my uncle Charles Henry. I would fix your head on the top of the gates of Scotland Yard! I’ve often examined the gates with that idea in my mind. Not that I thought of you, but that some day providence might send me a very high official, a Minister, even a Prime Minister. My uncle, as you know, was privileged to destroy kings and leaders of parties—Danton, Robespierre, every great leader save Murat. Danton was the greatest of them all.”
There was an excellent reason why Michael should not answer. But he was his own cool self again, and though his head was aching from the violent knock it had received, his mind was clear. He was waiting now for the next move, and suspected he would not be kept waiting long. What scenes had this long dining-room witnessed! What moments of agony, mental and physical! It was the very antechamber to death.
Here, then, Bhag must have been rendered momentarily unconscious. Michael guessed the lure of drugged wine, that butyl chloride which was part of the murderer’s equipment. But for once Longvale had misjudged the strength of his prey. Bhag must have followed the brown folk to Dower House—the man and woman whom the old man in his cunning had spared.
Michael was soon to discover what was going to happen. The old man opened the door of the buffet and took out a great steel hook, at the end of which was a pulley. Reaching up, he slipped the end of the hook into a steel bolt, fastened in one of the overhead beams. Michael had noticed it before and wondered what purpose it served. He was now to learn.
From the cupboard came a long coil of rope, one end of which was threaded through the pulley and fastened dexterously under the detective’s armpits. Stooping, Longvale lifted the carpet and rolled it up, and then Michael saw that there was a small trap-door, which he raised and laid back. Below he could see nothing, but there came to him the sound of a man’s groaning.
“Now I think we can dispense with that, sir,” said Mr. Longvale, and untied the serviette that covered the detective’s mouth.
This done, he pulled on the rope, seemingly without an effort, and Michael swung in mid-air. It was uncomfortable; he had an absurd notion that he looked a little ridiculous. The old man guided his feet through the opening and gradually paid out the rope.
“Will you be good enough to tell me when you touch ground,” he asked, “and I will come down to you?”
Looking up, Michael saw the square in the floor grow smaller and smaller, and for an unconscionable time he swung and swayed and turned in mid-air. He thought he was not moving, and then, without warning, his feet touched ground and he called out.
“Are you all right?” said Mr. Longvale pleasantly. “Do you mind stepping a few paces on one side? I am dropping the rope, and it may hurt you.”
Michael gasped, but carried out instructions, and presently he heard the swish of the falling line and the smack of it as it struck the ground. Then the trap-door closed, and there was no other sound but the groaning near at hand.
“Is that you, Penne?”
“Who is it?” asked the other in a frightened voice. “Is it you, Brixan? Where are we? What has happened? How did I get here? That old devil gave me a drink. I ran out—and that’s all I remember. I went to borrow his car. My God, I’m scared! The magneto of mine went wrong.”
“Did you shout when you ran from the house?”
“I think I did. I felt this infernal poison taking effect and dashed out—I don’t remember. Where are you, Brixan? The police will get us out of this, won’t they?”
“Alive, I hope,” said Michael grimly, and he heard the man’s frightened sob, and was sorry he had spoken.
“What is he? Who is he? Are these the caves? I’ve heard about them. It smells horribly earthy, doesn’t it? Can you see anything?”
“I thought I saw a light just then,” said Michael, “but my eyes are playing tricks.” And then: “Where is Adele Leamington?”
“God knows,” said the other. He was shivering, and Michael heard the sound of his chattering teeth. “I never saw her again. I was afraid Bhag would go after her. But he wouldn’t hurt her—he is a queer devil. I wish he was here now.”
“I wish somebody was here,” said Michael sincerely.
He was trying to work his wrists loose of the handcuffs, though he knew that bare-handed he stood very little chance against the old man. He had lost his pistol, and although, in the inside of his waistcoat, there remained intact the long, razor-sharp knife that had cleared him out of many a Continental scrape, the one infallible weapon when firearms failed, he knew that he would have no opportunity for its employment.
Sitting down, he tried to perform a trick that he had seen on a stage in Berlin—the trick of bringing his legs through his manacled hands and so getting his hands in front of him, but he struggled without avail. There came the sound of a door opening, and Mr. Longvale’s voice.
“I won’t keep you a moment,” he said. He carried a lantern in his hand that swung as he walked, and seemed to intensify the gloom. “I don’t like my patients to catch cold.”
His laughter came echoing back from the vaulted roof of the cave, intensified hideously. Stopping, he struck a match and a brilliant light appeared. It was a vapour lamp fixed on a shelf of rock. Presently he lit another, and then a third and a fourth, and, in the white, unwinking light, every object in the cave stood out with startling distinctness. Michael saw the scarlet thing that stood in the cave’s centre, and, hardened as he was, and prepared for that fearsome sight, he shuddered.
It was a guillotine!
CHAPTER XL“THE WIDOW”
A guillotine!
Standing in the middle of the cave, its high framework lifted starkly. It was painted blood-red, and its very simplicity had a horror of its own.
Michael looked, fascinated. The basket, the bright, triangular knife suspended at the top of the frame, the tilted platform with its dangling straps, the black-painted lunette shaped to receive the head of the victim and hold it in position till the knife fell in its oiled groove. He knew the machine bolt by bolt, had seen it in operation on grey mornings before French prisons, with soldiers holding back the crowd, and a little group of officials in the centre of the cleared space. He knew the sound of it, the “clop!” as it fell, sweeping to eternity the man beneath.
“ ‘The Widow’!” said Longvale humorously. He touched the frame lovingly.
“Oh God, I’m not fit to die!” It was Penne’s agonized wail that went echoing through the hollow spaces of the cavern.
“The Widow,” murmured the old man again.
He was without a hat; his bald head shone in the light, yet there was nothing ludicrous in his appearance. His attitude toward this thing he loved was in a sense pathetic.
“Who shall be her first bridegroom?”
“Not me, not me!” squealed Penne, wriggling back against the wall, his face ashen, his mouth working convulsively. “I’m not fit to die——”
Longvale walked slowly over to him, stooped and raised him to his feet.
“Courage!” he murmured. “It is the hour!”
Jack Knebworth was pacing the road when the police car came flying back from Chichester.
“He’s not there, hasn’t been to the station at all,” said the driver breathlessly as he flung out of the car.
“He may have gone into Longvale’s house.”
“I’ve seen Mr. Longvale: it was he who told me that the Captain had gone into Chichester. He must have made a mistake.”
Knebworth’s jaw dropped. A great light suddenly flashed upon his mind. Longvale! There was something queer about him. Was it possible——?
He remembered now that he had been puzzled by a contradictory statement the old man had made; remembered that, not once but many times, Sampson Longvale had expressed a desire to be filmed in a favourite part of his own, one that he had presented, an episode in the life of his famous ancestor.
“We’ll go and knock him up. I’ll talk to him.”
They hammered at the door without eliciting a response.
“That’s his bedroom.” Jack Knebworth pointed to a latticed window where a light shone, and Inspector Lyle threw up a pebble with such violence that the glass was broken. Still there was no response.
“I don’t like that,” said Knebworth suddenly.
“You don’t like it any better than I do,” growled the officer. “Try that window, Smith.”
“Do you want me to open it, sir?”
“Yes, without delay.”
A second later, the window of the long dining-room was prized open; and then they came upon an obstacle which could not be so readily forced.
“The shutter is steel-lined,” reported the detective. “I think I’d better try one of the upper rooms. Give me a leg up, somebody.”
With the assistance of a fellow, he reached up and caught the sill of an open window, the very window from which Adele had looked down into the grinning face of Bhag. In another second he was in the room, and was reaching down to help up a second officer. A few minutes’ delay, and the front door was unbarred and opened.
“There’s nobody in the house, so far as I can find out,” said the officer.
“Put a light on,” ordered the inspector shortly.
They found the little vapour lamp and lit it.
“What’s that?” The detective officer pointed to the hook that still hung in the beam with the pulley beneath, and his eyes narrowed. “I can’t understand that,” he said slowly. “What was that for?”
Jack Knebworth uttered an exclamation.
“Here’s Brixan’s gun!” he said, and picked it up from the floor.
One glance the inspector gave, and then his eyes went back to the hook and the pulley.
“That beats me,” he said. “See if you fellows can find anything anywhere. Open every cupboard, every drawer. Sound the walls—there may be secret doors; there are in all these old Tudor houses.”
The search was futile, and Inspector Lyle came back to a worried contemplation of the hook and pulley. Then one of his men came in to say that he had located the garage.
It was an unusually long building, and when it was opened, it revealed no more than the old-fashioned car which was a familiar object in that part of the country. But obviously, this was only half the accommodation. The seemingly solid whitewashed wall behind the machine hid another apartment, though it had no door, and an inspection of the outside showed a solid wall at the far end of the garage.
Jack Knebworth tapped the interior wall.
“This isn’t brickwork at all, it’s wood,” he said.
Hanging in a corner was a chain. Apparently it had no particular function, but a careful scrutiny led to the discovery that the links ran through a hole in the roughly plastered ceiling. The inspector caught the chain and pulled, and, as he did so, the “wall” opened inwards, showing the contents of the second chamber, which was a second car, so sheeted that only its radiator was visible. Knebworth pulled off the cover, and:
“That’s the car.”
“What car?” asked the inspector.
“The car driven by the Head-Hunter,” said Knebworth quickly. “He was in that machine when Brixan tried to arrest him. I’d know it anywhere! Brixan is in the Dower House somewhere, and if he’s in the hands of the Head-Hunter, God help him!”
They ran back to the house, and again the hook and pulley drew them as a magnet. Suddenly the police officer bent down and jerked back the carpet. The trap-door beneath the pulley was plainly visible. Pulling it open, he knelt down and gazed through. Knebworth saw his face grow haggard.
“Too late, too late!” he muttered.
CHAPTER XLITHE DEATH
Theshriek of a man half crazy with fear is not nice to hear. Michael’s nerves were tough, but he had need to drive the nails into the palms of his manacled hands to keep his self-control.
“I warn you,” he found voice to say, as the shrieking died to an unintelligible babble of sound, “Longvale, if you do this, you are everlastingly damned!”
The old man turned his quiet smile upon his second prisoner, but did not make any answer. Lifting the half-conscious man in his arms as easily as though he were a child, he carried him to the terrible machine, and laid him, face downwards, on the tilted platform. There was no hurry. Michael saw, in Longvale’s leisure, an enjoyment that was unbelievable. He stepped to the front of the machine and pulled up one half of the lunette; there was a click, and it remained stationary.
“An invention of mine,” he said with pride, speaking over his shoulder.
Michael looked away for a second, past the grim executioner, to the farther end of the cave. And then he saw a sight that brought the blood to his cheeks. At first he thought he was dreaming, and that the strain of his ordeal was responsible for some grotesque vision.
Adele!
She stood clear in the white light, so grimed with earth and dust that she seemed to be wearing a grey robe.
“If you move I will kill you!”
It was she! He twisted over on to his knees and staggered upright. Longvale heard the voice and turned slowly.
“My little lady,” he said pleasantly. “How providential! I’ve always thought that the culminating point of my career would be, as was the sainted Charles Henry’s, that moment when a queen came under his hand. How very singular!”
He walked slowly toward her, oblivious to the pointed pistol, to the danger in which he stood, a radiant smile on his face, his small, white hands extended as to an honoured guest.
“Shoot!” cried Michael hoarsely. “For God’s sake, shoot!”
She hesitated for a second and pressed the trigger. There was no sound—clogged with earth, the delicate mechanism did not act.
She turned to flee, but his arm was round her, and his disengaged hand drew her head to his breast.
“You shall see, my dear,” he said. “The Widow shall become the Widower, and you shall be his first bride!”
She was limp in his arms now, incapable of resistance. A strange sense of inertia overcame her; and, though she was conscious, she could neither of her own volition, move nor speak. Michael, struggling madly to release his hands, prayed that she might faint—that, whatever happened, she should be spared a consciousness of the terror.
“Now who shall be first?” murmured the old man, stroking his shiny head. “It would be fitting that my lady should show the way, and be spared the agony of mind. And yet——” He looked thoughtfully at the prostrate figure strapped to the board, and, tilting the platform, dropped the lunette about the head of Gregory Penne. The hand went up to the lever that controlled the knife. He paused again, evidently puzzling something out in his crazy mind.
“No, you shall be first,” he said, unbuckled the strap and pushed the half-demented man to the ground.
Michael saw him lift his head, listening. There were hollow sounds above, as of people walking. Again he changed his mind, stooped and dragged Gregory Penne to his feet. Michael wondered why he held him so long, standing so rigidly; wondered why he dropped him suddenly to the ground; and then wondered no longer. Something was crossing the floor of the cave—a great, hairy something, whose malignant eyes were turned upon the old man.
It was Bhag! His hair was matted with blood; his face wore the powder mask which Michael had seen when he emerged from Griff Towers. He stopped and sniffed at the groaning man on the floor, and his big paw touched the face tenderly. Then, without preliminary, he leapt at Longvale, and the old man went down with a crash to the ground, his arms whirling in futile defence. For a second Bhag stood over him, looking down, twittering and chattering; and then he raised the man and laid him in the place where his master had been, tilting the board and pushing it forward.
Michael gazed with fascinated horror. The great ape had witnessed an execution! It was from this cave that he had escaped, the night that Foss was killed. His half-human mind was remembering the details. Michael could almost see his mind working to recall the procedure.
Bhag fumbled with the frame, touched the spring that released the lunette, and it fell over the neck of the Head-Hunter. And at that moment, attracted by a sound, Michael looked up, saw the trap above pulled back. Bhag heard it also, but was too intent upon his business to be interrupted. Longvale had recovered consciousness and was fighting to draw his head from the lunette. Presently he spoke. It was as though he realized the imminence of his fate, and was struggling to find an appropriate phrase, for he lay quiescent now, his hands gripping the edge of the narrow platform on which he lay.
“Son of St. Louis, ascend to heaven!” he said, and at that moment Bhag jerked the handle that controlled the knife.
Inspector Lyle from above saw the blade fall, heard the indescribable sound of the thud that followed, and almost swooned. Then, from below:
“It’s all right, inspector. You may find a rope in the buffet. Get down as quickly as you can and bring a gun.”
The buffet cupboard contained another rope, and a minute later the detective was going down hand over hand.
“There’s no danger from the monkey,” said Michael.
Bhag was crooning over his senseless master, as a mother over her child.
“Get Miss Leamington away,” said Michael in a low voice, as the detective began to unlock the handcuffs.
The girl lay, an inanimate and silent figure, by the side of the guillotine, happily oblivious of the tragedy which had been enacted in her presence. Another detective had descended the rope, and old Jack Knebworth, despite his years, was the third to enter the cave. It was he who found the door, and aided the detective to carry the girl to safety.
Unlocking the handcuffs from the baronet’s wrists, Michael turned him over on his back. One glance at the face told the detective that the man was in a fit, and that his case, if not hopeless, was at least desperate. As though understanding that the man had no ill intent toward his master, Bhag watched passively, and then Michael remembered how, the first time he had seen the great ape, Bhag had smelt his hands.
“He’s filing you for future reference as a friend,” had said Gregory at the time.
“Pick him up,” said Michael, speaking distinctly in the manner that Gregory had addressed the ape.
Without hesitation, Bhag stooped and lifted the limp man in his arms, and Michael guided him to the stairway and led him up the stairs.
The house was full of police, who gaped at the sight of the great ape and his burden.
“Take him upstairs and put him on the bed,” ordered Michael.
Knebworth had already taken the girl off in his car to Chichester, for she had shown signs of reviving, and he wanted to get her away from that house of the dead before she fully recovered.
Michael went down into the cave again and joined the inspector. Together they made a brief tour. The headless figures in the niches told their own story. Farther on, Michael came to the bigger cavern, with its floor littered with bones.
“Here is confirmation of the old legend,” he said in a hushed voice, and pointed. “These are the bones of those warriors and squires who were trapped in the cave by a landslide. You can see the horses’ skeletons quite plainly.”
How had Adele got into the cave? He was not long before he found the slide down which she had tumbled.
“Another mystery is explained,” he said. “Griff Tower was obviously built by the Romans to prevent cattle and men from falling through into the cave. Incidentally, it has served as an excellent ventilator, and I have no doubt the old man had this way prepared, both as a hiding-place for the people he had killed and as a way of escape.”
He saw a candle-lantern and matches that the girl had missed, and this he regarded as conclusive proof that his view was right.
They came back to the guillotine with its ghastly burden, and Michael stood in silence for a long time, looking at the still figure stretched on the platform, its hands still clutching the sides.
“How did he persuade these people to come to their death?” asked the inspector in a voice little above a whisper.
“That is a question for the psychologist,” said Michael at last. “There is no doubt that he got into touch with many men who were contemplating suicide but shrank from the act, and performed this service for them. I should imagine his practice of leaving around their heads for identification arose out of some poor wretch’s desire that his wife and family should secure his insurance.
“He worked with extraordinary cunning. The letters, as you know, went to a house of call and were collected by an old woman, who posted them to a second address, whence they were put in prepared envelopes and posted, ostensibly to London. I discovered that the envelopes were kept in a specially light-proof box, and that the unknown advertiser had stipulated that they should not be taken out of that box until they were ready for posting. An hour after those letters were put in the mail the address faded and became invisible, and another appeared.”
“Vanishing ink?”
Mike nodded.
“It is a trick that criminals frequently employ. The new address, of course, was Dower House. Put out the lights and let us go up.”
Three lamps were extinguished, and the detective looked round fearfully at the shadows.
“I think we’ll leave this down here,” he said.
“I think we will,” said Michael, in complete agreement.
CHAPTER XLIICAMERA!
Threemonths had passed since the Dower House had yielded up its grisly secrets. A long enough time for Gregory Penne to recover completely and to have served one of the six months’ imprisonment to which he was sentenced on a technical charge. The guillotine had been re-erected in a certain Black Museum on the Thames Embankment, where young policemen come to look upon the equipment of criminality. People had ceased to talk about the Head-Hunter.
It seemed a million years ago to Michael as he sat, perched on a table, watching Jack Knebworth, in the last stages of despair, directing a ruffled Reggie Connolly in the business of love-making. Near by stood Adele Leamington, a star by virtue of the success that had attended a certain trade show.
Out of range of the camera, a cigarette between her fingers, Stella Mendoza, gorgeously attired, watched her some time friend and prospective leading man with good-natured contempt.
“There’s nobody can tell me, Mr. Knebworth,” said Reggie testily, “how to hold a girl! Good gracious, heavens alive, have I been asleep all my life? Don’t you think I know as much about girls as you, Mr. Knebworth?”
“I don’t care a darn how you hold your girl,” howled Jack. “I’m telling you how to holdmygirl! There’s only one way of making love, and that’smyway. I’ve got the patent rights! Your arm round her waist again, Connolly. Hold your head up, will you? Now turn it this way. Now drop your chin a little. Smile, darn you, smile! Not a prop smile!” he shrieked. “Smile as if you liked her. Try to imagine that she loves you! I’ll apologize to you, afterwards, Adele, but try to imagine it, Connolly. That’s better. You look as if you’d swallowed a liqueur of broken glass! Look down into her eyes—look, I said, not glare! That’s better. Now do that again——”
He watched, writhing, gesticulating, and at last, in cold resignation:
“Rotten, but it’ll have to do. Lights!”
The big Kreisler lights flared, the banked mercury lamps burnt bluely, and the flood lamps became blank expanses of diffused light. Again the rehearsal went through, and then:
“Camera!” wailed Jack, and the handle began to turn.
“That’s all for you to-day, Connolly,” said Jack. “Now, Miss Mendoza——”
Adele came across to where Michael was sitting and jumped up on to the table beside him.
“Mr. Knebworth is quite right,” she said, shaking her head. “Reggie Connolly doesn’t know how to make love.”
“Who does?” demanded Michael. “Except the right man?”
“He’s supposed to be the right man,” she insisted. “And, what’s more, he’s supposed to be the best lover on the English screen.”
“Ha ha!” said Michael sardonically.
She was silent for a time, and then:
“Why are you still here? I thought your work was finished in this part of the world.”
“Not all,” he said cheerfully. “I’ve still an arrest to make.”
She looked up at him quickly.
“Another?” she said. “I thought, when you took poor Sir Gregory——”
“Poor Sir Gregory!” he scoffed. “He ought to be a very happy man. Six months’ hard labour was just what he wanted, and he was lucky to be charged, not with the killing of his unfortunate servant but with the concealment of his death.”
“Whom are you arresting now?”
“I’m not so sure,” said Michael, “whether I shall arrest her.”
“Is it a woman?”
He nodded.
“What has she done?”
“The charge isn’t definitely settled,” he said evasively, “but I think there will be several counts. Creating a disturbance will be one; deliberately endangering public health—at any rate, the health of one of the public—will be another; maliciously wounding the feelings——”
“Oh,you, you mean?”
She laughed softly.
“I thought that was part of your delirium that night at the hospital, or part of mine. But as other people saw you kiss me, it must have been yours. I don’t think I want to marry,” she said thoughtfully. “I am——”
“Don’t say that you are wedded to your art,” he groaned. “They all say that!”
“No, I’m not wedded to anything, except a desire to prevent my best friend from making a great mistake. You’ve a very big career in front of you, Michael, and marrying me is not going to help you. People will think you’re just infatuated, and when the inevitable divorce comes along——”
They both laughed together.
“If you have finished being like a maiden aunt, I want to tell you something,” said Michael. “I’ve loved you from the moment I saw you.”
“Of course you have,” she said calmly. “That’s the only possible way youcanlove a girl. If it takes three days to make up your mind it can’t be love. That’s why I know I don’t love you. I was annoyed with you the first time I met you; I was furious with you the second time; and I’ve just tolerated you ever since. Wait till I get my make-up off.”
She got down and ran to her dressing-room. Michael strolled across to comfort an exhausted Jack Knebworth.
“Adele? Oh, she’s all right. She really has had an offer from America—not Hollywood, but a studio in the East. I’ve advised her not to take it until she’s a little more proficient, but I don’t think she wanted any advice. That girl isn’t going to stay in the picture business.”
“What makes you think that, Knebworth?”
“She’s going to get married,” said Jack glumly. “I can recognize the signs. I told you all along that there was something queer about her. She’s going to get married and leave the screen for good—that’s her eccentricity.”
“And whom do you think she will marry?” asked Michael.
Old Jack snorted.
“It won’t be Reggie Connolly—that I can promise you.”
“I should jolly well say not!” said that indignant young man, who had remarkably keen ears. “I’m not a marrying chap. It spoils an artist. A wife is like a millstone round his neck. He has no chance of expressing his individuality. And whilst we are on that subject, Mr. Knebworth, are you perfectly sure that I’m to blame? Doesn’t it strike you—mind you, I wouldn’t say a word against the dear girl—doesn’t it strike you that Miss Leamington isn’t quite—what shall I say?—seasoned in love—that’s the expression.”
Stella Mendoza had strolled up. She had returned to the scene of her former labours, and it looked very much as if she were coming back to her former position.
“When you say ‘seasoned’ you mean ‘smoked,’ Reggie,” she said. “I think you’re wrong.”
“I can’t be wrong,” said Reggie complacently. “I’ve made love to more girls in this country than any other five leading men, and I tell you that Miss Leamington is distinctly and fearfully immature.”
The object of their discussion appeared at the end of the studio, nodded a cheery good night to the company and went out, Michael on her heels.
“You’re fearfully immature,” he said, as he guided her across the road.
“Who said so? It sounds like Reggie: that is a favourite word of his.”
“He says you know nothing whatever about love-making.”
“Perhaps I don’t,” she said shortly, and so baffling was her tone that he was not prepared to continue the subject, until they reached the long, dark road in which she lived.
“The proper way to make love,” he said, more than a little appalled at his own boldness, “is to put one hand on the waist——”
Suddenly she was in his arms, her cool face against his.
“There isn’t any way,” she murmured. “One just does!”
THE END
JOHN LONG, LTD.,Publishers, LONDON, ENGLAND, 1926
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