cold pang of fear and doubt struck through Pericord's heart. He felt
aimlessly about in the dark and his fingers closed upon a hand. It was
cold and unresponsive. With all his anger turned to icy horror he struck
a match, set the lamp up, and lit it.
Brown lay huddled up on the other side of the packing-case. Pericord
seized him in his arms, and with convulsive strength lifted him across.
Then the mystery of his silence was explained. He had fallen with his
right arm doubled up under him, and his own weight had driven the knife
deeply into his body. He had died without a groan. The tragedy had been
sudden, horrible, and complete.
Pericord sat silently on the edge of the case, staring blankly down, and
shivering like one with the ague, while the great Brown-Pericord Motor
boomed and hurtled above him. How long he sat there can never be known.
It might have been minutes or it might have been hours. A thousand mad
schemes flashed through his dazed brain. It was true that he had been
only the indirect cause. But who would believe that? He glanced down at
his blood-spattered clothing. Everything was against him. It would be
better to fly than to give himself up, relying upon his innocence. No
one in London knew where they were. If he could dispose of the body he
might have a few days clear before any suspicion would be aroused.
Suddenly a loud crash recalled him to himself. The flying sack had
gradually risen with each successive circle until it had struck against
the rafters. The blow displaced the connecting-gear, and the machine
fell heavily to the ground. Pericord undid the girdle. The motor was
uninjured. A sudden, strange thought flashed upon him as he looked at
it. The machine had become hateful to him. He might dispose both of it
and the body in a way that would baffle all human search.
He threw open the barn door, and carried his companion out into the
moonlight. There was a hillock outside, and on the summit of this he
laid him reverently down. Then he brought from the barn the motor, the
girdle and the flanges. With trembling fingers he fastened the broad
steel belt round the dead man's waist. Then he screwed the wings into
the sockets. Beneath he slung the motor-box, fastened the wires, and
switched on the connection. For a minute or two the huge yellow fans
flapped and flickered. Then the body began to move in little jumps down
the side of the hillock, gathering a gradual momentum, until at last it
heaved up into the air and soared heavily off in the moonlight. He had
not used the rudder, but had turned the head for the south. Gradually
the weird thing rose higher, and sped faster, until it had passed over
the line of cliff, and was sweeping over the silent sea. Pericord
watched it with a white drawn face, until it looked like a black bird
with golden wings half shrouded in the mist which lay over the waters.
* * * * *
In the New York State Lunatic Asylum there is a wild-eyed man whose name
and birth-place are alike unknown. His reason has been unseated by some
sudden shock, the doctors say, though of what nature they are unable to
determine. "It is the most delicate machine which is most readily put
out of gear," they remark, and point, in proof of their axiom, to the
complicated electric engines, and remarkable aeronautic machines which
the patient is fond of devising in his more lucid moments.
VI
THE SEALED ROOM
A solicitor of an active habit and athletic tastes who is compelled by
his hopes of business to remain within the four walls of his office from
ten till five must take what exercise he can in the evenings. Hence it
was that I was in the habit of indulging in very long nocturnal
excursions, in which I sought the heights of Hampstead and Highgate in
order to cleanse my system from the impure air of Abchurch Lane. It was
in the course of one of these aimless rambles that I first met Felix
Stanniford, and so led up to what has been the most extraordinary
adventure of my lifetime.
One evening--it was in April or early May of the year 1894--I made my
way to the extreme northern fringe of London, and was walking down one
of those fine avenues of high brick villas which the huge city is for
ever pushing farther and farther out into the country. It was a fine,
clear spring night, the moon was shining out of an unclouded sky, and I,
having already left many miles behind me, was inclined to walk slowly
and look about me. In this contemplative mood, my attention was arrested
by one of the houses which I was passing.
It was a very large building, standing in its own grounds, a little back
from the road. It was modern in appearance, and yet it was far less so
than its neighbours, all of which were crudely and painfully new. Their
symmetrical line was broken by the gap caused by the laurel-studded
lawn, with the great, dark, gloomy house looming at the back of it.
Evidently it had been the country retreat of some wealthy merchant,
built perhaps when the nearest street was a mile off, and now gradually
overtaken and surrounded by the red brick tentacles of the London
octopus. The next stage, I reflected, would be its digestion and
absorption, so that the cheap builder might rear a dozen
eighty-pound-a-year villas upon the garden frontage. And then, as all
this passed vaguely through my mind, an incident occurred which brought
my thoughts into quite another channel.
A four-wheeled cab, that opprobium of London, was coming jolting and
creaking in one direction, while in the other there was a yellow glare
from the lamp of a cyclist. They were the only moving objects in the
whole long, moonlit road, and yet they crashed into each other with that
malignant accuracy which brings two ocean liners together in the broad
waste of the Atlantic. It was the cyclist's fault. He tried to cross in
front of the cab, miscalculated his distance, and was knocked sprawling
by the horse's shoulder. He rose, snarling; the cabman swore back at
him, and then, realising that his number had not yet been taken, lashed
his horse and lumbered off. The cyclist caught at the handles of his
prostrate machine, and then suddenly sat down with a groan. "Oh, Lord!"
he said.
I ran across the road to his side. "Any harm done?" I asked.
"It's my ankle," said he. "Only a twist, I think; but it's pretty
painful. Just give me your hand, will you?"
He lay in the yellow circle of the cycle lamp, and I noted as I helped
him to his feet that he was a gentlemanly young fellow, with a slight
dark moustache and large, brown eyes, sensitive and nervous in
appearance, with indications of weak health upon his sunken cheeks. Work
or worry had left its traces upon his thin, yellow face. He stood up
when I pulled his hand, but he held one foot in the air, and he groaned
as he moved it.
"I can't put it to the ground," said he.
"Where do you live?"
"Here!" he nodded his head towards the big, dark house in the garden. "I
was cutting across to the gate when that confounded cab ran into me.
Could you help me so far?"
It was easily done. I put his cycle inside the gate, and then I
supported him down the drive, and up the steps to the hall door. There
was not a light anywhere, and the place was as black and silent as if no
one had ever lived in it.
"That will do. Thank you very much," said he, fumbling with his key in
the lock.
"No, you must allow me to see you safe."
He made some feeble, petulant protest, and then realised that he could
really do nothing without me. The door had opened into a pitch-dark
hall. He lurched forward, with my hand still on his arm.
"This door to the right," said he, feeling about in the darkness.
I opened the door, and at the same moment he managed to strike a light.
There was a lamp upon the table, and we lit it between us. "Now, I'm all
right. You can leave me now! Good-bye!" said he, and with the words he
sat down in the arm-chair and fainted dead away.
It was a queer position for me. The fellow looked so ghastly, that
really I was not sure that he was not dead. Presently his lips quivered
and his breast heaved, but his eyes were two white slits and his colour
was horrible. The responsibility was more than I could stand. I pulled
at the bell-rope, and heard the bell ringing furiously far away. But no
one came in response. The bell tinkled away into silence, which no
murmur or movement came to break. I waited, and rang again, with the
same result. There must be some one about. This young gentleman could
not live all alone in that huge house. His people ought to know of his
condition. If they would not answer the bell, I must hunt them out
myself. I seized the lamp and rushed from the room.
What I saw outside amazed me. The hall was empty. The stairs were bare,
and yellow with dust. There were three doors opening into spacious
rooms, and each was uncarpeted and undraped, save for the grey webs
which drooped from the cornice, and rosettes of lichen which had formed
upon the walls. My feet reverberated in those empty and silent chambers.
Then I wandered on down the passage, with the idea that the kitchens, at
least, might be tenanted. Some caretaker might lurk in some secluded
room. No, they were all equally desolate. Despairing of finding any
help, I ran down another corridor, and came on something which surprised
me more than ever.
The passage ended in a large, brown door, and the door had a seal of red
wax the size of a five-shilling piece over the key-hole. This seal gave
me the impression of having been there for a long time, for it was dusty
and discoloured. I was still staring at it, and wondering what that door
might conceal, when I heard a voice calling behind me, and, running
back, found my young man sitting up in his chair and very much
astonished at finding himself in darkness.
"Why on earth did you take the lamp away?" he asked.
"I was looking for assistance."
"You might look for some time," said he. "I am alone in the house."
"Awkward if you get an illness."
"It was foolish of me to faint. I inherit a weak heart from my mother,
and pain or emotion has that effect upon me. It will carry me off some
day, as it did her. You're not a doctor, are you?"
"No, a lawyer. Frank Alder is my name."
"Mine is Felix Stanniford. Funny that I should meet a lawyer, for my
friend, Mr. Perceval, was saying that we should need one soon."
"Very happy, I am sure."
"Well, that will depend upon him, you know. Did you say that you had run
with that lamp all over the ground floor?"
"Yes."
"_All_ over it?" he asked, with emphasis, and he looked at me very hard.
"I think so. I kept on hoping that I should find some one."
"Did you enter _all_ the rooms?" he asked, with the same intent gaze.
"Well, all that I could enter."
"Oh, then you _did_ notice it!" said he, and he shrugged his shoulders
with the air of a man who makes the best of a bad job.
"Notice, what?"
"Why, the door with the seal on it."
"Yes, I did."
"Weren't you curious to know what was in it?"
"Well, it did strike me as unusual."
"Do you think you could go on living alone in this house, year after
year, just longing all the time to know what is at the other side of
that door, and yet not looking?"
"Do you mean to say," I cried, "that you don't know yourself?"
"No more than you do."
"Then why don't you look?"
"I mustn't," said he.
He spoke in a constrained way, and I saw that I had blundered on to some
delicate ground. I don't know that I am more inquisitive than my
neighbours, but there certainly was something in the situation which
appealed very strongly to my curiosity. However, my last excuse for
remaining in the house was gone now that my companion had recovered his
senses. I rose to go.
"Are you in a hurry?" he asked.
"No; I have nothing to do."
"Well, I should be very glad if you would stay with me a little. The
fact is that I live a very retired and secluded life here. I don't
suppose there is a man in London who leads such a life as I do. It is
quite unusual for me to have any one to talk with."
I looked round at the little room, scantily furnished, with a sofa-bed
at one side. Then I thought of the great, bare house, and the sinister
door with the discoloured red seal upon it. There was something queer
and grotesque in the situation, which made me long to know a little
more. Perhaps I should, if I waited. I told him that I should be very
happy.
"You will find the spirits and a siphon upon the side table. You must
forgive me if I cannot act as host, but I can't get across the room.
Those are cigars in the tray there. I'll take one myself, I think. And
so you are a solicitor, Mr. Alder?"
"Yes."
"And I am nothing. I am that most helpless of living creatures, the son
of a millionaire. I was brought up with the expectation of great wealth;
and here I am, a poor man, without any profession at all. And then, on
the top of it all, I am left with this great mansion on my hands, which
I cannot possibly keep up. Isn't it an absurd situation? For me to use
this as my dwelling is like a coster drawing his barrow with a
thoroughbred. A donkey would be more useful to him, and a cottage to
me."
"But why not sell the house?" I asked.
"I mustn't."
"Let it, then?"
"No, I mustn't do that either."
I looked puzzled, and my companion smiled.
"I'll tell you how it is, if it won't bore you," said he.
"On the contrary, I should be exceedingly interested."
"I think, after your kind attention to me, I cannot do less than relieve
any curiosity that you may feel. You must know that my father was
Stanislaus Stanniford, the banker."
Stanniford, the banker! I remembered the name at once. His flight from
the country some seven years before had been one of the scandals and
sensations of the time.
"I see that you remember," said my companion. "My poor father left the
country to avoid numerous friends, whose savings he had invested in an
unsuccessful speculation. He was a nervous, sensitive man, and the
responsibility quite upset his reason. He had committed no legal
offence. It was purely a matter of sentiment. He would not even face his
own family, and he died among strangers without ever letting us know
where he was."
"He died!" said I.
"We could not prove his death, but we know that it must be so, because
the speculations came right again, and so there was no reason why he
should not look any man in the face. He would have returned if he were
alive. But he must have died in the last two years."
"Why in the last two years?"
"Because we heard from him two years ago."
"Did he not tell you then where he was living?"
"The letter came from Paris, but no address was given. It was when my
poor mother died. He wrote to me then, with some instructions and some
advice, and I have never heard from him since."
"Had you heard before?"
"Oh, yes, we had heard before, and that's where our mystery of the
sealed door, upon which you stumbled to-night, has its origin. Pass me
that desk, if you please. Here I have my father's letters, and you are
the first man except Mr. Perceval who has seen them."
"Who is Mr. Perceval, may I ask?"
"He was my father's confidential clerk, and he has continued to be the
friend and adviser of my mother and then of myself. I don't know what we
should have done without Perceval. He saw the letters, but no one else.
This is the first one, which came on the very day when my father fled,
seven years ago. Read it to yourself."
This is the letter which I read:
"MY EVER DEAREST WIFE,--
"Since Sir William told me how weak your heart is, and how
harmful any shock might be, I have never talked about my
business affairs to you. The time has come when at all risks I
can no longer refrain from telling you that things have been
going badly with me. This will cause me to leave you for a
little time, but it is with the absolute assurance that we
shall see each other very soon. On this you can thoroughly
rely. Our parting is only for a very short time, my own
darling, so don't let it fret you, and above all don't let it
impair your health, for that is what I want above all things to
avoid.
"Now, I have a request to make, and I implore you by all that
binds us together to fulfil it exactly as I tell you. There are
some things which I do not wish to be seen by any one in my
dark room--the room which I use for photographic purposes at
the end of the garden passage. To prevent any painful thoughts,
I may assure you once for all, dear, that it is nothing of
which I need be ashamed. But still I do not wish you or Felix
to enter that room. It is locked, and I implore you when you
receive this to at once place a seal over the lock, and leave
it so. Do not sell or let the house, for in either case my
secret will be discovered. As long as you or Felix are in the
house, I know that you will comply with my wishes. When Felix
is twenty-one he may enter the room--not before.
"And now, good-bye, my own best of wives. During our short
separation you can consult Mr. Perceval on any matters which
may arise. He has my complete confidence. I hate to leave Felix
and you--even for a time--but there is really no choice.
"Ever and always your loving husband,
"STANISLAUS STANNIFORD.
"_June 4th, 1887._"
* * * * *
"These are very private family matters for me to inflict upon you," said
my companion apologetically. "You must look upon it as done in your
professional capacity. I have wanted to speak about it for years."
"I am honoured by your confidence," I answered, "and exceedingly
interested by the facts."
"My father was a man who was noted for his almost morbid love of truth.
He was always pedantically accurate. When he said, therefore, that he
hoped to see my mother very soon, and when he said that he had nothing
to be ashamed of in that dark room, you may rely upon it that he meant
it."
"Then what can it be?" I ejaculated.
"Neither my mother nor I could imagine. We carried out his wishes to the
letter, and placed the seal upon the door; there it has been ever since.
My mother lived for five years after my father's disappearance, although
at the time all the doctors said that she could not survive long. Her
heart was terribly diseased. During the first few months she had two
letters from my father. Both had the Paris postmark, but no address.
They were short and to the same effect: that they would soon be
re-united, and that she should not fret. Then there was a silence, which
lasted until her death; and then came a letter to me of so private a
nature that I cannot show it to you, begging me never to think evil of
him, giving me much good advice, and saying that the sealing of the room
was of less importance now than during the lifetime of my mother, but
that the opening might still cause pain to others, and that, therefore,
he thought it best that it should be postponed until my twenty-first
year, for the lapse of time would make things easier. In the meantime,
he committed the care of the room to me; so now you can understand how
it is that, although I am a very poor man, I can neither let nor sell
this great house."
"You could mortgage it."
"My father had already done so."
"It is a most singular state of affairs."
"My mother and I were gradually compelled to sell the furniture and to
dismiss the servants, until now, as you see, I am living unattended in a
single room. But I have only two more months."
"What do you mean?"
"Why, that in two months I come of age. The first thing that I do will
be to open that door; the second, to get rid of the house."
"Why should your father have continued to stay away when these
investments had recovered themselves?"
"He must be dead."
"You say that he had not committed any legal offence when he fled the
country?"
"None."
"Why should he not take your mother with him?"
"I do not know."
"Why should he conceal his address?"
"I do not know."
"Why should he allow your mother to die and be buried without coming
back?"
"I do not know."
"My dear sir," said I, "if I may speak with the frankness of a
professional adviser, I should say that it is very clear that your
father had the strongest reasons for keeping out of the country, and
that, if nothing has been proved against him, he at least thought that
something might be, and refused to put himself within the power of the
law. Surely that must be obvious, for in what other possible way can the
facts be explained?"
My companion did not take my suggestion in good part.
"You had not the advantage of knowing my father, Mr. Alder," he said
coldly. "I was only a boy when he left us, but I shall always look upon
him as my ideal man. His only fault was that he was too sensitive and
too unselfish. That any one should lose money through him would cut him
to the heart. His sense of honour was most acute, any theory of his
disappearance which conflicts with that is a mistaken one."
It pleased me to hear the lad speak out so roundly, and yet I knew that
the facts were against him, and that he was incapable of taking an
unprejudiced view of the situation.
"I only speak as an outsider," said I. "And now I must leave you, for I
have a long walk before me. Your story has interested me so much that I
should be glad if you could let me know the sequel."
"Leave me your card," said he; and so, having bade him "good-night," I
left him.
I heard nothing more of the matter for some time, and had almost feared
that it would prove to be one of those fleeting experiences which drift
away from our direct observation and end only in a hope or a suspicion.
One afternoon, however, a card bearing the name of Mr. J. H. Perceval
was brought up to my office in Abchurch Lane, and its bearer, a small,
dry, bright-eyed fellow of fifty, was ushered in by the clerk.
"I believe, sir," said he, "that my name has been mentioned to you by my
young friend, Mr. Felix Stanniford?"
"Of course," I answered, "I remember."
"He spoke to you, I understand, about the circumstances in connection
with the disappearance of my former employer, Mr. Stanislaus Stanniford,
and the existence of a sealed room in his former residence."
"He did."
"And you expressed an interest in the matter."
"It interested me extremely."
"You are aware that we hold Mr. Stanniford's permission to open the door
on the twenty-first birthday of his son?"
"I remember."
"The twenty-first birthday is to-day."
"Have you opened it?" I asked eagerly.
"Not yet, sir," said he gravely. "I have reason to believe that it would
be well to have witnesses present when that door is opened. You are a
lawyer, and you are acquainted with the facts. Will you be present on
the occasion?"
"Most certainly."
"You are employed during the day, and so am I. Shall we meet at nine
o'clock at the house?"
"I will come with pleasure."
"Then you will find us waiting for you. Good-bye, for the present." He
bowed solemnly, and took his leave.
I kept my appointment that evening, with a brain which was weary with
fruitless attempts to think out some plausible explanation of the
mystery which we were about to solve. Mr. Perceval and my young
acquaintance were waiting for me in the little room. I was not surprised
to see the young man looking pale and nervous, but I was rather
astonished to find the dry little City man in a state of intense, though
partially suppressed, excitement. His cheeks were flushed, his hands
twitching, and he could not stand still for an instant.
Stanniford greeted me warmly, and thanked me many times for having come.
"And now, Perceval," said he to his companion, "I suppose there is no
obstacle to our putting the thing through without delay? I shall be glad
to get it over."
The banker's clerk took up the lamp and led the way. But he paused in
the passage outside the door, and his hand was shaking, so that the
light flickered up and down the high, bare walls.
"Mr. Stanniford," said he, in a cracking voice, "I hope you will prepare
yourself in case any shock should be awaiting you when that seal is
removed and the door is opened."
"What could there be, Perceval? You are trying to frighten me."
"No, Mr. Stanniford; but I should wish you to be ready ... to be braced
up ... not to allow yourself ..." He had to lick his dry lips between
every jerky sentence, and I suddenly realised, as clearly as if he had
told me, that he knew what was behind that closed door, and that it
_was_ something terrible. "Here are the keys, Mr. Stanniford, but
remember my warning!"