"The young men you bid me watch are very quiet," I suggested, with a
careless wave of my hand towards the room he had mentioned.
"Oh, there is no one there yet. They begin to straggle in about ten
o'clock."
"Ah," was my quiet rejoinder, "I am likely, then, to have use for your
brandy."
He smiled again and made a swift motion towards the door.
"If you want anything," said he, "just step to the foot of the staircase
and let me know. The whole establishment is at your service." And with
one final grin that remains in my mind as the most threatening and
diabolical I have ever witnessed, he laid his hand on the knob of the
door and slid quickly out.
It was done with such an air of final farewell that I felt my
apprehensions take a positive form. Rushing towards the door through
which he had just vanished, I listened and heard, as I thought, his
stealthy feet descend the stair. But when I sought to follow, I found
myself for the second time overwhelmed by darkness. The gas jet, which
had hitherto burned with great brightness in the small room, had been
turned off from below, and beyond the faint glimmer which found its way
through the small window of which I have spoken, not a ray of light now
disturbed the heavy gloom of this gruesome apartment.
I had thought of every contingency but this, and for a few minutes my
spirits were dashed. But I soon recovered some remnants of
self-possession, and began feeling for the knob I could no longer see.
Finding it after a few futile attempts, I was relieved to discover that
this door at least was not locked; and, opening it with a careful hand,
I listened intently, but could hear nothing save the smothered sound of
men talking in the room below.
Should I signal for my companions? No, for the secret was not yet mine
as to how men passed from this room into the watery grave which was the
evident goal for all wearers of the blue ribbon.
Stepping back into the middle of the room, I carefully pondered my
situation, but could get no further than the fact that I was somehow,
and in some way, in mortal peril. Would it come in the form of a bullet,
or a deadly thrust from an unseen knife? I did not think so. For, to say
nothing of the darkness, there was one reassuring fact which recurred
constantly to my mind in connection with the murders I was endeavouring
to trace to this den of iniquity.
None of the gentlemen who had been found drowned had shown any marks of
violence on their bodies, so it was not attack I was to fear, but some
mysterious, underhanded treachery which would rob me of consciousness
and make the precipitation of my body into the water both safe and easy.
Perhaps it was in the bottle of brandy that the peril lay; perhaps--but
why speculate further! I would watch till midnight and then, if nothing
happened, signal my companions to raid the house.
Meantime a peep into the next room might help me towards solving the
mystery. Setting the bottle and glass aside, I dragged the table across
the floor, placed it under the lighted window, mounted, and was about to
peer through, when the light in that apartment was put out also. Angry
and overwhelmed, I leaped down, and, stretching out my hands till they
touched the wainscoting, I followed the wall around till I came to the
knob of the door, which I frantically clutched. But I did not turn it
immediately, I was too anxious to catch these villains at work.
Would I be conscious of the harm they meditated against me, or would I
imperceptibly yield to some influence of which I was not yet conscious,
and drop to the floor before I could draw my revolver or put to my mouth
the whistle upon which I depended for assistance and safety? It was hard
to tell, but I determined to cling to my first intention a little
longer, and so stood waiting and counting the minutes, while wondering
if the captain of the police boat was not getting impatient, and whether
I had not more to fear from the anxiety of my friends than the cupidity
of my foes.
You see, I had anticipated communicating with the men in this boat by
certain signals and tokens which had been arranged between us. But the
lack of windows in the room had made all such arrangements futile, so I
knew as little of their actions as they did of my sufferings; all of
which did not tend to add to the cheerfulness of my position.
However, I held out for a half-hour, listening, waiting, and watching in
a darkness which, like that of Egypt, could be felt, and when the
suspense grew intolerable I struck a match and let its blue flame
flicker for a moment over the face of my watch. But the matches soon
gave out and with them my patience, if not my courage, and I determined
to end the suspense by knocking at the door beneath.
This resolution taken, I pulled open the door before me and stepped out.
Though I could see nothing, I remembered the narrow landing at the top
of the stairs, and, stretching out my arms, I felt for the boarding on
either hand, guiding myself by it, and began to descend, when something
rising, as it were, out of the cavernous darkness before me made me halt
and draw back in mingled dread and horror.
But the impression, strong as it was, was only momentary, and, resolved
to be done with the matter, I precipitated myself downward, when
suddenly, at about the middle of the staircase, my feet slipped and I
slid forward, plunging and reaching out with hands whose frenzied grasp
found nothing to cling to, down a steep inclined plane--or what to my
bewildered senses appeared such--till I struck a yielding surface and
passed with one sickening plunge into the icy waters of the river, which
in another moment had closed dark and benumbing above my head.
It was all so rapid I did not think of uttering a cry. But happily for
me the splash I made told the story, and I was rescued before I could
sink a second time.
It was full half an hour before I had sufficiently recovered from the
shock to relate my story. But when once I had made it known, you can
imagine the gusto with which the police prepared to enter the house and
confound the obliging host with a sight of my dripping garments and
accusing face. And, indeed, in all my professional experience I have
never beheld a more sudden merging of the bully into a coward than was
to be seen in this slick villain's face, when I was suddenly pulled from
the crowd and placed before him, with the old man's wig gone from my
head, and the tag of blue ribbon still clinging to my wet coat.
His game was up, and he saw it; and Ebenezer Gryce's career had begun.
Like all destructive things the device by which I had been run into the
river was simple enough when understood. In the first place it had been
constructed to serve the purpose of a stairway and chute. The latter was
in plain sight when it was used by the sailmakers to run the finished
sails into the waiting yawls below. At the time of my adventure, and for
some time before, the possibilities of the place had been discovered by
mine host, who had ingeniously put a partition up the entire stairway,
dividing the steps from the smooth runway. At the upper part of the
runway he had built a few steps, wherewith to lure the unwary far enough
down to insure a fatal descent. To make sure of his game he had likewise
ceiled the upper room all around, including the inclosure of the stairs.
The door to the chute and the door to the stairs were side by side, and
being made of the same boards as the wainscoting, were scarcely visible
when closed, while the single knob that was used, being transferable
from one to the other, naturally gave the impression that there was but
one door. When this adroit villain called my attention to the little
window around the corner, he no doubt removed the knob from the stairs'
door and quickly placed it in the one opening upon the chute. Another
door, connecting the two similar landings without, explains how he got
from the chute staircase into which he passed on leaving me, to the one
communicating with the room below.
The mystery was solved, and my footing on the force secured; but to this
day--and I am an old man now--I have not forgotten the horror of the
moment when my feet slipped from under me, and I felt myself sliding
downward, without hope of rescue, into a pit of heaving waters, where so
many men of conspicuous virtue had already ended their valuable lives.
Myriad thoughts flashed through my brain in that brief interval, and
among them the whole method of operating this death-trap, together with
every detail of evidence that would secure the conviction of the entire
gang.