I stood still in horror, my eyes riveted upon the shrivelled human body.
It was stretched out upon several chairs placed side by side. The
sight was most gruesome.
Near it, upon the floor, was an ordinary packing-case, in the bottom of
which a quantity of wood shavings had been pressed down, to form a sort
of bed. At once I realised that this box had been prepared for the
reception of the body.
It was about to be smuggled out of the house!
But how did it come to be there? Whose body was it? How long had it
been dead? And how had the man--for I saw it was the body of a man,
apparently a man of middle-age--come by his death?
It was not the sight of the Thing that had startled me, however, for I
had expected to see it there.
What had taken my breath away had been the sight of great heaps of coin
upon the floor, gold coin which had evidently just been emptied out of
the little sacks close by. Near by were some glass bottles containing
powdered metal, some bottles of coloured fluid, and various implements--
a couple of metal moulds, a ladle, a miniature hand-lathe, several
files, and some curiously-fashioned tools which I judged must be
finishing tools used in the manufacture of coin.
The truth was plain--a ghastly unexpected truth.
Thorold and Whichelo were, or had been, in some way concerned in issuing
base coin, though to me it seemed hardly possible that Sir Charles could
actually be implicated. I picked up a handful of the shining coins, and
let them fall between my fingers in a golden stream. If they were not
golden French louis they were certainly fine imitations. All the coins
were French twenty and ten-franc pieces, I noticed. There were no
British coins among them, nor were there coins of any other nation. In
all, there must have been several thousands of them.
When I had recovered from my surprise, I began to examine the body more
closely. With my electric torch I ran a flash all along it and to and
fro. It was the body of a man about thirty, I definitely decided, and
it was swathed in brown rags. I had seen bodies in the catacombs in
Rome and in Paris that looked like this, and also in South America I had
seen some.
South America! My thought of that continent set up a fresh train of
thought in my mind. It made me think of Mexico, and the thought of
Mexico, though not in South America, brought the tall, dark man,
Whichelo, back to me vividly. He had been in Mexico a great deal at one
time, Vera had told me. And this mummified body lying in front of me--
yes, it singularly resembled the mummified bodies I had seen in Mexico
when on my travels about the world.
What had caused death? Critical inspection with my electric torch
showed distinctly a fracture at the base of the skull, as though it had
been struck with some blunt implement, such as a hammer.
Yes, there could be no doubt that the skull had been severely fractured.
I should have held the theory that the poor fellow had been attacked
from behind, felled to the ground with some iron weapon. I wondered
greatly how long the man had been dead. No expert knowledge was needed
to decide that he must have been dead a number of years. And where had
the body been hidden all this time?
Instinctively I glanced at the ceiling--at the gaping hole in it--and
instantly I knew. This mummified body had been hidden away, buried
between the ceiling and floor! It had been in that corner, where the
hole now was. And the brown stain I had noticed in the corner of the
ceiling...
But the money? Why, of course, the money must have been there, too. A
thought struck me. I picked up some of the coins again, and glanced at
the dates. Twenty-five or thirty years ago they were dated, yet they
looked quite new. Clearly, then, they had not been in circulation.
Paulton's significant remark returned to me--the remark he had made that
night in the room in Chateau d'Uzerche, when I had said something about
not revealing Sir Charles Thorold's secret.
Could there be some hidden connexion between this discovery I had made,
Thorold's secret, and the charge upon which Paulton was "wanted?"
I spent some time in examining the room and its contents. Then I
explored other parts of the house.
Was I now gradually approaching the solution of Sir Charles Thorold's
secret?
I believed it more than likely that I might now at last be well on my
way to solving the mystery of Houghton Park and the Thorolds' sudden
flight. That Sir Charles and his big friend would not return that night
I fully believed. They might, or might not, be superstitious, but there
could be no doubt I had terrified them thoroughly. If they returned at
all it would be in the daytime, I conjectured.
What was to be done? How should I act?
I decided that the only thing to do would be to go out into the street
and inform the constable of all that had happened. I had told him I
would not stay long in the house in any case, and my prolonged absence
might be making him feel uneasy.
I left by the front door--which I found securely bolted and chained on
the inside--and there found the constable flashing his bull's-eye
lantern upon the door, and with his truncheon ready drawn.
"Hush!" I whispered, and he smiled upon seeing me, and at once replaced
his truncheon.
"I was beginning to feel very anxious on your account, sir," he said.
"I 'arf wondered who might be a-comin' out. Well, sir, did you see
anything?"
"I should say so," I answered, and then, as briefly as I could, I told
him nearly everything.