BACK AGAIN
That sense of security, of peace, and of deep happiness was
inexpressibly sweet, she thought, as she lay in Larry Holt’s arms.
Presently she released herself, and in a few hurried words had said
enough to send a small battalion of detectives racing to the dormitory
and through the brick door, which she had left ajar.
Larry handed the girl to the care of Harvey and followed his men. The
room where Diana had been imprisoned was empty. He stopped long enough
to switch off the current, then joined the searchers. There was no
doubt that this place, for all its unoccupied appearance, had regular
tenants. They found rooms that had been built within rooms, a thin
wall being erected within a few feet of each window. This meant that
the house might be occupied at night, and lights might blaze in every
apartment without anybody outside being the wiser.
Blind Jake had said no more than the truth when he had told the girl
that there were plenty of ways out of the house. They found one in the
cellar that led to an old disused rain-water sewer, and here pursuit
was abandoned. None of the party except Larry, who always carried a
small flash lamp, was equipped for a chase through the darkness.
Another exit led directly into the yard where Larry had found the
garage. A third communicated with the kitchen of Todd’s Home.
Larry, realizing that his quarry had escaped, went back to the girl.
He found her sitting in the superintendent’s office, the watchful
Harvey embarrassingly close to her side--an attitude which was
explained when the laughing girl lifted one of her arms, for Harvey,
who was taking no risks, had handcuffed their wrists together!
“And very wise, too,” said Larry with a smile as the detective
unfastened the irons. “Now, Mr. Dearborn, I want to have some sort of
explanation of the mysterious happenings in this house.”
“I don’t think anything mysterious has happened here,” said Mr.
Dearborn quietly. “You cannot hold me responsible for villainy which
may have been perpetrated next door. I am told that there are doors
communicating between these two houses, but of that I had not the
slightest knowledge. If there was a man living next door----”
“There were six men living next door,” said Larry. “We found their
beds and some of their clothing. From the fact that there were books,
some of them open, it is pretty clear that they are not blind.”
Mr. Dearborn shrugged his despair.
“What can I do?” he asked. “In this house we are dependent entirely
upon the loyalty of our inmates; and though it is possible sometimes
to detect the presence of a stranger by his unusual footfalls, his
voice or his cough, it is quite possible that these men made the
freest use of the Home for the purpose of carrying on their nefarious
work without our having the slightest knowledge of such things.”
This argument was so logical that Larry did not contest its truth.
These cunning men who formed the gang might use the Home with
impunity, if they exercised care in their movements and maintained
silence. Frankly, he acknowledged the reasonableness of Mr. Dearborn’s
argument.
“I quite appreciate the possibility,” he said. “It is rather
unfortunate for you as well as for me. It might have been a great deal
more unfortunate,” he added with truth. Though how unfortunately this
adventure might have ended he had to learn when the girl told her
story on the way to Scotland Yard.
“Dreadful, dreadful!” he shuddered. “My poor, poor child!”
His own relief had been so great that he felt physically ill. But no
such reaction was visible in the girl, who grew calmer and brighter as
the taxi neared Scotland Yard. She wore his raincoat, and they had
stopped in the Edgware Road to allow her to buy a blouse, for she
insisted upon going to Scotland Yard first to make her statement.
“I’m rather sorry for Dearborn,” he said. “He is a pathetic figure.
Men who devote their lives to this kind of work may be excused even
their feeble dramatic efforts. Did you notice how eagerly he shook
hands with you?”
She looked at him sharply.
“Yes, I noticed that,” she said in a strange tone.
“Why, Diana,” he said, “what do you mean?”
“Oh, nothing,” she said lightly. “I mean that he took my hand, that is
all, and shook it very heartily.”
“Well, there’s nothing in that,” said Larry with a smile.
“There is a great deal in that,” said the girl, “a great deal more
than you can realize.”
He leaned back in the cab and laughed softly.
“You’re going to mystify me. I can feel it coming on,” he said, and
she squeezed his arm affectionately.
He sent her up to 47 alone, and she had changed her torn blouse for
the new purchase by the time he discreetly knocked at the door.
“By the way,” he said, “I forgot to ask you. Where did you dig up that
deadly-looking weapon I saw in your hand as you were coming down the
stairs?”
“From Blind Jake’s pocket,” she said. “Ugh! It was horrid touching
him, but I wanted to be quite sure that I had some kind of weapon.”
“Undoubtedly you have a big end of the story,” he said. “We know now
that Blind Jake and the man Lew----”
“Have you left him there?” she asked quickly.
He smiled a little wryly.
“I’ve made too many mistakes in this case to add to them,” he said.
“No, I have taken this man to another institution where he is being
looked after. Lew and Jake were the two men who were employed, either
before or after the murder of Gordon Stuart,” he went on. “The gang
has probably got a hold on Lew, and he was anxious to escape from
their clutches or to be avenged upon them for some treachery they have
committed, and he wrote the message which we found--on the strip of
paper with the Braille characters. That fines the search down to one
man, because we can find means of inducing Lew to understand whose
hands he is in.”
“And the greatest discovery of all you haven’t touched,” she said
quietly.
Larry got up from his chair, laughing, and paced the room, a favourite
occupation of his.
“You’re an extraordinary girl,” he said. “No sooner do I think I have
got the case set, than you produce something new, something more
important in the shape of clues, and something generally,” he added
pensively, “that upsets all my previous theories.”
“I don’t think this will,” she said. “I am referring to the woman
upstairs.”
“What woman upstairs?” he asked, astounded.
“Do you remember I told you that Jake pointed with his thumb to the
ceiling, and said if I had a face like hers----” She stopped.
“I’m sorry,” he said gently. “I’m a brute and a forgetful brute; but
things have happened to-day which have driven the Stuart case out of
my mind. And that reminds me,” he said, “I want to telephone.”
He called a number, and she recognized it as the number of the
Trafalgar Hospital.
“I want the matron’s office, please,” he said, and whilst she was
wondering where his mind had led him, he said: “Is that you, matron?
It is I, Larry Holt. Yes, how do you do? Are the nurses you send out
to cases having a slack time? I mean, are there plenty to go round?
There are? Well, will you send a nice motherly lady to my address at
Regent’s Gate Gardens? You know where I live? No, I’m not ill,” he
smiled, “but I have somebody with me who isn’t too well--yes, a lady.”
He hung up the receiver and turned to meet the girl’s astonished eyes.
“Have you a lady staying with you?” she asked.
“I haven’t, but I shall have,” said Larry. “You’re not going back to
Charing Cross Road to-night except to get the things you require;
you’re coming up to my flat, and there you’re going to stay,
chaperoned by a very nice nurse, and you’ll greatly oblige me if
you’ll pretend that you’re a little bit under the weather. I must save
my face.”
“But I can’t, it’s impossible!” she said, scarlet of face. “I
couldn’t----”
“Oh, yes, you could,” said Larry. “Now you’re going to do as I tell
you. Otherwise, it means that I must sit outside your flat all night
catching my death of cold.”
Finally she consented. They dined together, and he took her to see two
acts of the Dearborn play. They came out at the end of the second act,
bewildered.
“But how could anybody put such awful stuff on the stage?” asked the
girl on their way to his flat.
“It is rather amazing, isn’t it?”
Then Larry began to chuckle.
“You’re easily amused to-day,” she said.
“I’m very happy to-night,” he corrected. “It just occurred to me that
Sunny will have to meet the nurse when she comes.”
“Whatever will he say?” she gasped.
“Well,” drawled Larry, “if the nurse insists there’s a lady ill in the
house, Sunny will say, ‘Yes, madam,’ and will do his best to produce
one!”
It was past eleven when they got to the flat. The elevators had
stopped running at half-past ten, and they had to walk up the stairs.
“Watch your step,” warned Larry. “They light these stairways
abominably.”
He went first, and she saw him pause on the top step of the second
flight.
“Great Scott! Who’s that?” he asked.
Against his door a man was lying, doubled up and still. Larry leant
over him and rang the bell, and Sunny came to the door.
In the flood of light thrown by the hall lamp Larry saw the face of
the prostrate figure. He was breathing stertorously, and his face and
his head streamed with blood.
“Sunny, has the nurse arrived?”
“Yes, sir,” said Sunny, looking down at the figure.
“Then she’ll be wanted,” said Larry quietly.
“Who is it?” asked Diana, peering round behind him.
“Flash Fred,” said Larry, “and as near to dead as makes no
difference.”