with a smile. “But this is insoluble? Ah, well. When I was a boy I used
to be extraordinarily fond of ghost stories, I remember, but even while
reading them I always had an uneasy suspicion that when it came to the
necessary detail of explaining the mystery I should be defrauded with
some subterfuge as ‘by an ingenious arrangement of hidden wires the
artful Muggles had contrived,’ etc., or ‘an optical illusion effected by
means of concealed mirrors revealed the _modus operandi_ of the
apparition.’ I thought that I had been swindled. I think so still. I
hope there are no ingenious wires or concealed mirrors here, Mr
Trigget?”
Mr Trigget looked mildly sagacious but hopelessly puzzled. It was his
misfortune that in him the necessities of his business and the
proclivities of his nature were at variance, so that he ordinarily
presented the curious anomaly of looking equally alert and tired.
“Wires, sir?” he began, with faint amusement.
“Not only wires, but anything that might account for what is going on,”
interposed Mr Carlyle. “Mr Carrados means this, Trigget: you have
reported that it is impossible for anyone to be concealed in the flat or
to have secret access to it----”
“I have tested every inch of space in all the rooms, Mr Carrados, sir,”
protested the hurt Trigget. “I have examined every board and, you may
say, every nail in the floor, the skirting-boards, the window frames and
in fact wherever a board or a nail exists. There are no secret ways in
or out. Then I have taken the most elaborate precautions against the
doors and windows being used for surreptitious ingress and egress. They
have not been used, sir. For the past week I am the only person who has
been in and out of the flat, Mr Carrados, and yet night after night the
gas that is cut off at the meter is lit and turned out again, and the
water that is cut off at the cistern splashes about in the bath up to
the second I let myself in. Then it’s as quiet as the grave and
everything is exactly as I left it. It isn’t human, Mr Carrados, sir,
and flesh and blood can’t stand it--not in the middle of the night, that
is to say.”
“You see nothing further, Mr Trigget?”
“I don’t indeed, Mr Carrados. I would suggest doing away with the gas in
that room altogether. As a box-room it wouldn’t need one.”
“And the bathroom?”
“That might be turned into a small bedroom and all the water fittings
removed. Then to provide a bathroom----”
“Yes, yes,” interrupted Mr Carlyle impatiently, “but we are retained to
discover who is causing this annoyance and to detect the means, not to
suggest structural alterations in the flat, Trigget. The fact is that
after having put in a week on this job you have failed to bring us an
inch nearer its solution. Now Mr Carrados has suggested”--Mr Carlyle was
not usually detained among the finer shades of humour, but some
appreciation of the grotesqueness of the advice required him to control
his voice as he put the matter in its baldest form--“Mr Carrados has
suggested that instead of spending the time measuring the chimneys and
listening to the wall-paper, if you had simply blown down the
gas-pipe----”
Carrados was inclined to laugh, although he thought it rather too bad of
Louis.
“Not quite in those terms, Mr Trigget,” he interposed.
“Blow down the gas-pipe, sir?” repeated the amazed man. “What for?”
“To ascertain where the other end comes out,” replied Carlyle.
“But don’t you see, sir, that that is a detail until you ascertain how
it is being done? The pipe may be tapped between the bath and the
cistern. Naturally, I considered that. As a matter of fact, the
water-pipe isn’t tapped. It goes straight up from the bath to the
cistern in the attic above, a distance of only a few feet, and I have
examined it. The gas-pipe, it is true, passes through a number of flats,
and without pulling up all the floors it isn’t practicable to trace it.
But how does that help us, Mr Carrados? The gas-tap has to be turned on
and off; you can’t do that with these hidden wires. It has to be lit.
I’ve never heard of lighting gas by optical illusions, sir. Somebody
must get in and out of the flat or else it isn’t human. I’ve spent a
week, a very trying week, sir, in endeavouring to ascertain how it could
be done. I haven’t shirked cold and wet and solitude, sir, in the
discharge of my duty. I’ve freely placed my poor gifts of observation
and intelligence, such as they are, at the service----”
“Not ‘freely,’ Trigget,” interposed his employer with decision.
“I am speaking under a deep sense of injury, Mr Carlyle,” retorted Mr
Trigget, who, having had time to think it over, had now come to the
conclusion that he was not appreciated. “I am alluding to a moral
attitude such as we all possess. I am very grieved by what has been
suggested. I didn’t expect it of you, Mr Carlyle, sir; indeed I did not.
For a week I have done everything that it has been possible to do,
everything that a long experience could suggest, and now, as I
understand it, sir, you complain that I didn’t blow down the gas-pipe,
sir. It’s hard, sir; it’s very hard.”
“Oh, well, for heaven’s sake don’t cry about it, Trigget,” exclaimed Mr
Carlyle. “You’re always sobbing about the place over something or other.
We know you did your best--God help you!” he added aside.
“I did, Mr Carlyle; indeed I did, sir. And I thank you for that
appreciative tribute to my services. I value it highly, very highly
indeed, sir.” A tremulous note in the rather impassioned delivery made
it increasingly plain that Mr Trigget’s regimen had not been confined
entirely to solid food that day. His wrongs were forgotten and he
approached Mr Carrados with an engaging air of secrecy.
“What is this tip about blowing down the gas-pipe, sir?” he whispered
confidentially. “The old dog’s always willing to learn something new.”
“Max,” said Mr Carlyle curtly, “is there anything more that we need
detain Trigget for?”
“Just this,” replied Carrados after a moment’s thought. “The
gas-bracket--it has a mantle attachment on?”
“Oh no, Mr Carrados,” confided the old dog with the affectation of
imparting rather valuable information, “not a mantle on. Oh, certainly
no mantle. Indeed--indeed, not a mantle at all.”
Mr Carlyle looked at his friend curiously. It was half evident that
something might have miscarried. Furthermore, it was obvious that the
warmth of the room and the stress of emotion were beginning to have a
disastrous effect on the level of Mr Trigget’s ideas and speech.
“A globe?” suggested Carrados.
“A globe? No, sir, not even a globe, in the strict sense of the word. No
globe, that is to say, Mr Carrados. In fact nothing like a globe.”
“What is there, then?” demanded the blind man without any break in his
unruffled patience. “There may be another way--but surely--surely there
must be some attachment?”
“No,” said Mr Trigget with precision, “no attachment at all; nothing at
all; nothing whatsoever. Just the ordinary or common or penny plain
gas-jet, and above it the whayoumaycallit thingamabob.”
“The shade--gas consumer--of course!” exclaimed Carrados. “That is it.”
“The tin thingamabob,” insisted Mr Trigget with slow dignity. “Call it
what you will. Its purpose is self-evident. It acts as a dispirator--a
distributor, that is to say----”
“Louis,” struck in Carrados joyously, “are you good for settling it
to-night?”
“Certainly, my dear fellow, if you can really give the time.”
“Good; it’s years since I last tackled a ghost. What about----?” His
look indicated the other member of the council.
“Would he be of any assistance?”
“Perhaps--then.”
“What time?”
“Say eleven-thirty.”
“Trigget,” rapped out his employer sharply, “meet us at the corner of
Middlewood and Enderby Roads at half-past eleven sharp to-night. If you
can’t manage it I shall not require your services again.”
“Certainly, sir; I shall not fail to be punctual,” replied Trigget
without a tremor. The appearance of an almost incredible sobriety had
possessed him in the face of warning, and both in speech and manner he
was again exactly the man as he had entered the room. “I regard it as a
great honour, Mr Carrados, to be associated with you in this business,
sir.”
“In the meanwhile,” remarked Carrados, “if you find the time hang heavy
on your hands you might look up the subject of ‘platinum black.’ It may
be the new tip you want.”
“Certainly, sir. But do you mind giving me a hint as to what ‘platinum
black’ is?”
“It is a chemical that has the remarkable property of igniting hydrogen
or coal gas by mere contact,” replied Carrados. “Think how useful that
may be if you haven’t got a match!”
To mark the happy occasion Mr Carlyle had insisted on taking his friend
off to witness a popular musical comedy. Carrados had a few preparations
to make, a few accessories to procure for the night’s work, but the
whole business had come within the compass of an hour and the theatre
spanned the interval between dinner at the Palm Tree and the time when
they left the car at the appointed meeting-place. Mr Trigget was already
there, in an irreproachable state of normal dejection. Parkinson
accompanied the party, bringing with him the baggage of the expedition.
“Anything going on, Trigget?” inquired Mr Carlyle.
“I’ve made a turn round the place, sir, and the light was on,” was the
reply. “I didn’t go up for fear of disturbing the conditions before you
saw them. That was about ten minutes ago. Are you going into the yard to
look again? I have all the keys, of course.”
“Do we, Max?” queried Mr Carlyle.
“Mr Trigget might. We need not all go. He can catch us up again.”
He caught them up again before they had reached the outer door.
“It’s still on, sir,” he reported.
“Do we use any special caution, Max?” asked Carlyle.
“Oh no. Just as though we were friends of the ghost, calling in the
ordinary way.”
Trigget, who retained the keys, preceded the party up the stairs till
the top was reached. He stood a moment at the door of No. 11 examining,
by the light of the electric lamp he carried, his private marks there
and pointing out to the others in a whisper that they had not been
tampered with. All at once a most dismal wail, lingering, piercing, and
ending in something like a sob that died away because the life that gave
it utterance had died with it, drawled forebodingly through the echoing
emptiness of the deserted flat. Trigget had just snapped off his light
and in the darkness a startled exclamation sprang from Mr Carlyle’s
lips.
“It’s all right, sir,” said the little man, with a private satisfaction
that he had the diplomacy to conceal. “Bit creepy, isn’t it? especially
when you hear it by yourself up here for the first time. It’s only the
end of the bath-water running out.”
He had opened the door and was conducting them to the room at the end of
the passage. A faint aurora had been visible from that direction when
they first entered the hall, but it was cut off before they could
identify its source.
“That’s what happens,” muttered Trigget.
He threw open the bedroom door without waiting to examine his marks
there and they crowded into the tiny chamber. Under the beams of the
lamps they carried it was brilliantly though erratically illuminated.
All turned towards the central object of their quest, a tarnished
gas-bracket of the plainest description. A few inches above it hung the
metal disc that Trigget had alluded to, for the ceiling was low and at
that point it was brought even nearer to the gas by corresponding with
the slant of the roof outside.
With the prescience so habitual with him that it had ceased to cause
remark among his associates Carrados walked straight to the gas-bracket
and touched the burner.
“Still warm,” he remarked. “And so are we getting now. A thoroughly
material ghost, you perceive, Louis.”
“But still turned off, don’t you see, Mr Carrados, sir,” put in Trigget
eagerly. “And yet no one’s passed out.”
“Still turned off--and still turned on,” commented the blind man.
“What do you mean, Max?”
“The small screwdriver, Parkinson,” requested Carrados.
“Well, upon my word!” dropped Mr Carlyle expressively. For in no longer
time than it takes to record the fact Max Carrados had removed a screw
and then knocked out the tap. He held it up towards them and they all at
once saw that so much of the metal had been filed away that the gas
passed through no matter how the tap stood. “How on earth did you know
of that?”
“Because it wasn’t practicable to do the thing in any other way. Now
unhook the shade, Parkinson--carefully.”
The warning was not altogether unnecessary, for the man had to stand on
tiptoes before he could comply. Carrados received the dingy metal cone
and lightly touched its inner surface.
“Ah, here, at the apex, to be sure,” he remarked. “The gas is bound to
get there. And there, Louis, you have an ever-lit and yet a truly
‘safety’ match--so far as gas is concerned. You can buy the thing for a
shilling, I believe.”
Mr Carlyle was examining the tiny apparatus with interest. So small that
it might have passed for the mummy of a midget hanging from a cobweb, it
appeared to consist of an insignificant black pellet and an inch of the
finest wire.
“Um, I’ve never heard of it. And this will really light the gas?”
“As often as you like. That is the whole bag of tricks.”
Mr Carlyle turned a censorious eye upon his lieutenant, but Trigget was
equal to the occasion and met it without embarrassment.
“I hadn’t heard of it either, sir,” he remarked conversationally.
“Gracious, what won’t they be getting out next, Mr Carlyle!”
“Now for the mystery of the water.” Carrados was finding his way to the
bathroom and they followed him down the passage and across the hall. “In
its way I think that this is really more ingenious than the gas, for, as
Mr Trigget has proved for us, the water does not come from the cistern.
The taps, you perceive, are absolutely dry.”
“It is forced up?” suggested Mr Carlyle, nodding towards the outlet.
“That is the obvious alternative. We will test it presently.” The blind
man was down on his hands and knees following the lines of the different
pipes. “Two degrees more cold are not conclusive, because in any case
the water has gone out that way. Mr Trigget, you know the ropes, will
you be so obliging as to go up to the cistern and turn the water on.”
“I shall need a ladder, sir.”
“Parkinson.”
“We have a folding ladder out here,” said Parkinson, touching Mr
Trigget’s arm.
“One moment,” interposed Carrados, rising from his investigation among
the pipes; “this requires some care. I want you to do it without making
a sound or showing a light, if that is possible. Parkinson will help
you. Wait until you hear us raising a diversion at the other end of the
flat. Come, Louis.”
The diversion took the form of tapping the wall and skirting-board in
the other haunted room. When Trigget presented himself to report that
the water was now on Carrados put him to continue the singular exercise
with Mr Carlyle while he himself slipped back to the bathroom.
“The pump, Parkinson,” he commanded in a brisk whisper to his man, who
was waiting in the hall.
The appliance was not unlike a powerful tyre pump with some
modifications. One tube from it was quickly fitted to the outlet pipe of
the bath, another trailed a loose end into the bath itself, ready to
take up the water. There were a few other details, the work of moments.
Then Carrados turned on the tap, silencing the inflow by the attachment
of a short length of rubber tube. When the water had risen a few inches
he slipped off to the other room, told his rather mystified confederates
there that he wanted a little more noise and bustle put into their
performance, and was back again in the bathroom.
“Now, Parkinson,” he directed, and turned off the tap. There was about a
foot of water in the bath.
Parkinson stood on the broad base of the pump and tried to drive down
the handle. It scarcely moved.
“Harder,” urged Carrados, interpreting every detail of sound with
perfect accuracy.
Parkinson set his teeth and lunged again. Again he seemed to come up
against a solid wall of resistance.
“Keep trying; something must give,” said his master encouragingly.
“Here, let me----” He threw his weight into the balance and for a moment
they hung like a group poised before action. Then, somewhere, something
did give and the sheathing plunger “drew.”
“Now like blazes till the bath is empty. Then you can tell the others to
stop hammering.” Parkinson, looking round to acquiesce, found himself
alone, for with silent step and quickened senses Carrados was already
passing down the dark flights of the broad stone stairway.
It was perhaps three minutes later when an excited gentleman in the
state of disrobement that is tacitly regarded as falling upon the
_punctum cæcum_ in times of fire, flood and nocturnal emergency shot out
of the door of No. 7 and bounding up the intervening flights of steps
pounded with the knocker on the door of No. 9. As someone did not appear
with the instantaneity of a jack-in-the-box, he proceeded to repeat the
summons, interspersing it with an occasional “I say!” shouted through
the letter-box.
The light above the door made it unconvincing to affect that no one was
at home. The gentleman at the door trumpeted the fact through his
channel of communication and demanded instant attention. So immersed was
he with his own grievance, in fact, that he failed to notice the
approach of someone on the other side, and the sudden opening of the
door, when it did take place, surprised him on his knees at his
neighbour’s doorstep, a large and consequential-looking personage as
revealed in the light from the hall, wearing the silk hat that he had
instinctively snatched up, but with his braces hanging down.
“Mr Tupworthy of No. 7, isn’t it?” quickly interposed the new man before
his visitor could speak. “But why this--homage? Permit me to raise you,
sir.”
“Confound it all,” snorted Mr Tupworthy indignantly, “you’re flooding my
flat. The water’s coming through my bathroom ceiling in bucketfuls. The
plaster’ll fall next. Can’t you stop it? Has a pipe burst or something?”
“Something, I imagine,” replied No. 9 with serene detachment. “At all
events it appears to be over now.”
“So I should hope,” was the irate retort. “It’s bad enough as it is. I
shall go round to the office and complain. I’ll tell you what it is, Mr
Belting: these mansions are becoming a pandemonium, sir, a veritable
pandemonium.”
“Capital idea; we’ll go together and complain: two will be more
effective,” suggested Mr Belting. “But not to-night, Mr Tupworthy. We
should not find anyone there. The office will be closed. Say
to-morrow----”
“I had no intention of anything so preposterous as going there to-night.
I am in no condition to go. If I don’t get my feet into hot water at
once I shall be laid up with a severe cold. Doubtless you haven’t
noticed it, but I am wet through to the skin, saturated, sir.”
Mr Belting shook his head sagely.
“Always a mistake to try to stop water coming through the ceiling,” he
remarked. “It will come, you know. Finds its own level and all that.”
“I did not try to stop it--at least not voluntarily. A temporary
emergency necessitated a slight rearrangement of our accommodation. I--I
tell you this in confidence--I was sleeping in the bathroom.”
At the revelation of so notable a catastrophe Mr Belting actually seemed
to stagger. Possibly his eyes filled with tears; certainly he had to
turn and wipe away his emotion before he could proceed.
“Not--not right under it?” he whispered.
“I imagine so,” replied Mr Tupworthy. “I do not conceive that I could
have been placed more centrally. I received the full cataract in the
region of the ear. Well, if I may rely on you that it has stopped, I
will terminate our interview for the present.”
“Good-night,” responded the still tremulous Belting. “Good-night--or
good-morning, to be exact.” He waited with the door open to light the
first flight of stairs for Mr Tupworthy’s descent. Before the door was
closed another figure stepped down quietly from the obscurity of the
steps leading upwards.
“Mr Belting, I believe?” said the stranger. “My name is Carrados. I have
been looking over the flat above. Can you spare me a few minutes?”
“What, Mr Max Carrados?”
“The same,” smiled the owner of the name.
“Come in, Mr Carrados,” exclaimed Belting, not only without
embarrassment, but with positive affection in his voice. “Come in by all
means. I’ve heard of you more than once. Delighted to meet you. This
way. I know--I know.” He put a hand on his guest’s arm and insisted on
steering his course until he deposited him in an easy-chair before a
fire. “This looks like being a great night. What will you have?”
Carrados put the suggestion aside and raised a corner of the situation.
“I’m afraid that I don’t come altogether as a friend,” he hinted.
“It’s no good,” replied his host. “I can’t regard you in any other light
after this. You heard Tupworthy? But you haven’t seen the man, Mr
Carrados. I know--I’ve heard--but no wealth of the imagination can ever
really quite reconstruct Tupworthy, the shoddy magnifico, in his immense
porcine complacency, his monumental self-importance. And sleeping right
underneath! Gods, but we have lived to-night! Why--why ever did you
stop?”
“You associate me with this business?”
“Associate you! My dear Mr Carrados, I give you the full glorious credit
for the one entirely successful piece of low comedy humour in real life
that I have ever encountered. Indeed, in a legal and pecuniary sense, I
hold you absolutely responsible.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Carrados, beginning to laugh quietly. Then he continued:
“I think that I shall come through that all right. I shall refer you to
Mr Carlyle, the private inquiry agent, and he will doubtless pass you on
to your landlord, for whom he is acting, and I imagine that he in turn
will throw all the responsibility on the ingenious gentleman who has put
them to so much trouble. Can you guess the result of my investigation in
the flat above?”
“Guess, Mr Carrados? I don’t need to guess: I _know_. You don’t suppose
I thought for a moment that such transparent devices as two intercepted
pipes and an automatic gas-lighter would impose on a man of
intelligence? They were only contrived to mystify the credulous
imagination of clerks and porters.”
“You admit it, then?”
“Admit! Good gracious, of course I admit it, Mr Carrados. What’s the use
of denying it?”
“Precisely. I am glad you see that. And yet you seem far from being a
mere practical joker. Does your confidence extend to the length of
letting me into your object?”
“Between ourselves,” replied Mr Belting, “I haven’t the least objection.
But I wish that you would have--say a cup of coffee. Mrs Belting is
still up, I believe. She would be charmed to have the opportunity----No?
Well, just as you like. Now, my object? You must understand, Mr
Carrados, that I am a man of sufficient leisure and adequate means for
the small position we maintain. But I am not unoccupied--not idle. On
the contrary, I am always busy. I don’t approve of any man passing his
time aimlessly. I have a number of interests in life--hobbies, if you
like. You should appreciate that, as you are a private criminologist. I
am--among other things which don’t concern us now--a private
retributionist. On every side people are becoming far too careless and
negligent. An era of irresponsibility has set in. Nobody troubles to
keep his word, to carry out literally his undertakings. In my small way
I try to set that right by showing them the logical development of their
ways. I am, in fact, the sworn enemy of anything approaching sloppiness.
You smile at that?”
“It is a point of view,” replied Carrados. “I was wondering how the
phrase at this moment would convey itself, say, to Mr Tupworthy’s ear.”
Mr Belting doubled up.