THE DEATH ROOM
He carried a flash-lamp in his hand, but it was some time before he
discovered the switch, which was set high in the wall, near the
sloping roof of the stairs on the farthermost side of the door. A
click, and the void before them was illuminated. He could see nothing
from where he stood save a brass bedstead destitute of clothing. Down
two steps and three paces along a narrow passage, and he was in the
room. Floor, roof, and walls were of cement-work, and he saw that what
he had thought was one was really two rooms, the second being fitted
up roughly as a bathroom. There were no windows of any kind, and he
had not expected them. The air was heavy and stale, and evidently the
two ventilators near the ceiling were not in working order.
But it was not the bathroom nor the bedstead to which his eyes
strayed; it was to a great block of granite in the centre of the room.
In the stone, which was a cube two feet in each direction, was a large
steel bolt, and from this bolt ran a thin rusted chain, also of steel.
Each yard of the chain ran through a block of lead, which Larry judged
to be ten pounds in weight, and there were three of these. The chain
terminated in a brass leg-ring.
“Yes,” said Larry, “I think so.”
He picked up the ring and examined it, and, trying first one and then
the other of his keys upon the little lock, the opening of which was
protected by a sliding cover, presently he saw the two catches snap
back, and heaved a sigh.
“Thank God for that!” he said. “I was afraid I’d missed the key.”
He looked round at Harvey and Harvey’s face was a study.
“What is this, Mr. Holt?” he asked, bewildered.
“The operating room of the ‘Dark Eyes,’” replied Larry briefly.
“Do you mean to say that these devils----”
Larry nodded. He was walking around the walls, looking for a place
where he could conceal the waterproof bag he carried in his pocket.
There was not so much as a crack into which it could be hidden, for
the big holes set in the wall near the floor at regular intervals
were, he knew, of no value for his purpose. Then his eye fell upon the
granite block, and, exerting all his strength, he pulled at it. Slowly
it canted away. There had been no necessity to cement to the floor a
block of that weight.
“Give me a hand to ease this down, Harvey,” he said, and the two men
lowered the block on its side.
It had fitted truly, and its base was perhaps only an inch deeper than
the floor. Where it had stood the workmen had not taken the trouble to
make its foundations secure, and there was a depression in the cement,
irregular and shallow, but large enough for Larry’s purpose. He took
the waterproof bag--it was no more than a sponge bag--from his pocket
and began to drop various articles into the bottom. Key followed key
and then:
“A handcuff key, if you’ve got one, Harvey,” he said. “I left mine in
my room.”
Harvey found a handcuff key in his waistcoat pocket and passed it
across to his superior.
“And this, I think,” said Larry, and took something from his pocket
and placed it in the bag.
He smoothed the bag and its contents as flat as possible, and it just
fitted into the depression. Then the two men lifted the stone and put
it back in its place.
“May I ask,” said the bewildered Harvey, “what is the idea?”
Larry laughed, and his laugh sounded hollow in that dreadful room,
which had never heard laughter.
“Is the servant in this?” asked Harvey.
“I’m perfectly sure he isn’t. This gang wouldn’t trust a servant,”
replied Larry. “No, he probably keeps to his own part of the house,
and doesn’t even enter the reception room except when his boss is at
home, unless he is sent for. If you notice this house, it has been
built for a specific purpose. For example, the room has a vacuum
bracket in the wainscot, there is an electric lift from the kitchen,
and a private stairway to the bedrooms and study upstairs. My theory
is, but I haven’t time to confirm it, that the servant lives in
practically a house of his own, which has no connection with this part
of the building. Did you notice a door opposite what I would call the
engine-room? It wasn’t easy to spot because it looked like the rest of
the wall. In reality, it is of iron, camouflaged as concrete. It is on
the ground level and leads to the yard at the side of the house, and
incidentally to the garage.”
Harvey shouldered his tools.
“This is a horrible place, Mr. Holt,” he said with a shudder. “In all
my thirty-five years of police experience I have never been
so--shocked. It sounds silly to you?”
“Not a bit,” said Larry quietly. “I am shocked beyond words.”
“You really think that that is the place where these people have been
done to death?”
“I’m certain of it,” said Larry. “In that room Gordon Stuart went over
to the other side.”
They went back in the hall now. By the side of the door there was a
narrow slit of a window covered by a strip of silk casement cloth, and
Harvey went to this and pulled it aside.
“There’s a car at the door,” he said. “Just come up.”
Larry stepped to his side and looked. A man had descended from a
taxicab and was paying the driver.
“The Reverend Mr. Dearborn,” said Larry. “How interesting!”
Larry hesitated only for a second, then he opened the door, and the
Rev. John Dearborn, who had turned from the cab, and whose hand was on
the spikes of the gate, bent his head suddenly as though he had
remembered something, and beckoned the cabman.
“My friend,” he said, “I cannot see you, but are you still there?”
“Yes, sir,” replied the cabman.
“I have remembered that I wish to call at the post office. Will you
take me there?”
His hand groped out and the cabman took it, and leaning back opened
the door again.
Before Larry could get down the steps the cab was on the move. The
detective turned back with a little smile.
“David Judd can wait,” he said softly.
“David Judd?” said Harvey.
“David Judd!” repeated Larry Holt. “Who said this is not an age of
miracles, when the blind can see as John Dearborn sees, and David
Judd, dead and buried, is rollicking round London in a taxicab?
Harvey, there’s a great detective in this city.”
“There is, sir,” said Sergeant Harvey heartily. “And the name of the
same is Holt.”
“It isn’t, but it will be,” said Larry softly.