A Search with Piano Accompaniment
If Carmichael let his colleagues in for a late sitting, at least he
made amends for it himself by unwontedly early rising. Reeves found
him fully dressed when, pyjamaed himself, he set out for his morning
bath.
“What on earth are you doing,” he asked, “wandering about at this
hour?”
“Well, you see,” said Carmichael, “I had to go and clear up your room
before the housemaid came in. Housemaids don’t like chewing-gum on
their boots.” And with this partial explanation Reeves had to be
satisfied till they sat down to smoke a pipe after breakfast in a
secluded corner of the lounge.
“For Heaven’s sake let’s have an explanation,” he urged. “There’s a
chewing-gum _motif_ running through life at present which is worrying
me more than I can say.”
“I don’t mind about that,” said Gordon; “what worries me is Carmichael
being up and dressed at half-past seven.”
“Well, if you prefer it, let us put it this way,” said Carmichael. “I
had to get up early, Reeves, to unlock your room; otherwise the maid
wouldn’t have been able to tidy it for you.”
“To unlock it? When did you lock it, then?”
“When I left it, to be sure, at twelve o’clock last night.”
“What! Do you mean to say that Gordon and I sat there for a solid hour
waiting for somebody to go into my room, when the door was locked all
the time? Look here, Carmichael, if you’ve simply been pulling our
legs——”
“No, I have not been pulling your legs, if I apprehend rightly the
meaning of that rather puzzling metaphor. You were waiting for
somebody to _try_ to get into your room; if he had tried, he would
have found two muscular young men tackling him from behind, and the
possibility of getting through the door would have had a merely
academic interest.”
“But I thought you said we were to catch him red-handed? Pretty good
fools we should have looked if we had found that it was some guest
who’d mistaken his room, or somebody who was wanting to borrow a
pipe-cleaner!”
“I admit it. But then, you see, I had an intuition, almost amounting
to a certainty, that the visitor who intruded upon your room does not
come in through the door.”
“Oh, he doesn’t? Then you mean that Gordon and I were merely
sacrificed to your peculiar sense of humour—we weren’t really doing
any good? My word, Carmichael——”
“You are always too hasty in leaping to conclusions. You were doing a
great deal of good by sitting up in the room opposite. You were
convincing the mysterious gentleman that I expected him to come
through the door. And it was that conviction which emboldened him to
pay you a visit last night. I am sorry to have practised any deception
on you two, but really it was the only means that occurred to me for
inducing the gentleman behind the scenes to act as he did. And after
all, I only made you sit up for an hour.”
“An hour,” said Gordon, “cannot be properly measured by the movements
of a clock, an inanimate thing which registers time but doesn’t _feel_
it. Many things lengthen time; but three things above all, darkness,
silence, and not smoking. The watch we kept last night was a fair
equivalent for three hours over a fire with a pipe.”
“Well, I apologize. But you will be glad to hear that the experiment
succeeded. Somebody did come into your room last night, Reeves, and
wandered all over it, though of course he found nothing that was of
the slightest interest to him, because there was nothing to find.”
“And how do you know all this?”
“That is where the chewing-gum comes in. Seccotine would have done:
but chewing-gum is more certain. I do not profess to understand why
people chew: my impression is that it is merely a kind of fidgeting.
Those people who talk about the unconscious would probably tell you
that all fidgeting is a form of ‘compensation.’ Observe that word, for
it is the great hole in their logic. Their idea is that So-and-so does
not murder his grandmother, but he does twiddle his thumbs. They will
tell you, consequently, that twiddling your thumbs is a kind of
compensation for not murdering your grandmother. But the whole
strength of their case should rest on their ability to _prove_ a
connexion between the two things, and instead of proving it you will
find that they steadily assume it. However, as I was saying—the
peculiarity of van Beuren’s special chewing-gum is this: that it can
be drawn out to an almost indefinite length, and forms a thread of
almost invisible fineness. If you stretch such threads, say, between
one chair and another all over a room, as I did round your room,
Reeves, last night, the great probability is that a casual visitor
will walk into it and carry whole strands of it away with him, without
noticing anything peculiar.”
“What!” said Reeves, “you mean like Sherlock Holmes and the
cigarette-ash on the carpet?”
“It was not one of Holmes’ more original performances. He had been
anticipated, in point of fact, by the prophet Daniel. You should read
the story of Bel and the Dragon, Reeves.”
“And now,” said Gordon, “I suppose we proceed to the station, and take
a good look at the trouser-ends of all our club-fellows as they wait
for the London train?”
“Why, no. I do not think that method would be very fruitful. My idea
was not to discover _who_ it is that visits Reeves’ room, but to make
sure that there is somebody who does so, and that he does not come
through the door.”
“In fact, that he comes through the window?”
“No, my dear Gordon, it is not everybody who has your agility in
negotiating windows. The windows in question are a good twenty feet
from the ground; there is no drain-pipe near them; and anyone who
attempted to put a ladder up to them would leave traces among the
begonias beneath which even a caddy would not find it difficult to
follow up.”
“Well, come on, don’t be so mysterious. What is it? A secret passage?”
“That seems to be the only sensible solution. One does not, of course,
expect a secret passage in a club-house. But then, you see, this is
not like other club-houses, and you, Reeves, must have been struck
like myself by the significance of what Marryatt was saying last
night.”
“What was Marryatt saying last night?”
“Why, that the Oatviles were Catholics, nay, were noted Recusants,
right up to the time of the third William. That means, of course, that
they harboured priests; and you could not harbour priests within this
distance of London without having a priests’ hiding-hole. There was a
man, his name escapes me at the moment, who made it his special
business to go about constructing these hiding-holes. A priori, then,
it is fairly certain that there must be some architectural secret
about the old manor-house of the Oatviles. And perhaps in this case
they ran to a secret passage.”
“Reeves, my boy,” said Gordon, “you’ll have to keep this dark, or
they’ll be putting up the rent of your rooms.”
Reeves still seemed a little dissatisfied. “But surely, Carmichael,
while we were about it we could have kept watch in the room itself,
and seen where the hiding-place is, and who comes out of it.”
“We could have tried. But tell me: how much of our conversation does
this gentleman overhear? And whereabouts in your room could you have
hidden with any safety? Honestly, I don’t believe he would have come
out except while he knew that you and Gordon were busy watching the
wrong side of the door.”
“You’re assuming, of course, that he can’t have got in at the door by
a duplicate key after Reeves and I went to bed?”
“I am not assuming that, I know it. I took the liberty of putting a
bit of that useful chewing-gum across the lock of the door, and it was
still undisturbed in the morning. Whereas the chewing-gum which
stretched between the chairs had been ploughed up in every direction.”
“As it is, though, we’ve still got to find the entrance to the
passage.”
“As you say. I thought we might spend a happy morning looking for it.
Let’s see, there is a piano in your rooms; do you play it?”
“Very badly.”
“That’s exactly what we want.”
“How do you mean?”
“Why, if you sit in your rooms playing the piano, the gentleman on the
other side of the partition will probably assume that nothing much is
happening. If you play it loudly, you will drown any little thumping
noises we may happen to make. And if you play it very badly, the
gentleman on the other side, if he is at all musical, will probably
retreat to the utmost limits of his hiding-place.”
“But look here,” said Gordon, “we’re not certain this man is the
murderer. Is it quite humane——”
“Oh, shut up,” said Mordaunt Reeves. “You’re right, Carmichael, as
usual. What’s wrong with starting now?”
Reeves, it must be confessed, did his part of the programme admirably.
He even sang to his own accompaniment. When he got to “Land of Hope
and Glory,” Gordon asked if he might not have cotton-wool in his ears.
He also expressed a fear that all the other residents would come in
asking Reeves to stop. But fortunately it was a time of day at which
the residents are either in London on business, or going round the
links like sensible men.
Meanwhile, under cover of Reeves’ barrage, the search was proceeding
busily. “The ceiling,” said Carmichael, “is out of the question. Even
if there was a concealed trap-door in it, it would be too risky to let
down ladders and pull them up again. Now, how about the floor? There’s
this felt under-carpet—I suppose that’s nailed down all right,
Reeves?”
“Wider sti-ill, and wider,” sang Reeves,
“Nailed it down myself;
Bought it Tottenham Court Road
Just a yea-ear ago.”
“Well, nobody’s been in a position to take liberties with the carpet,
that’s clear, and it goes right up to the edges of the floor, so I
think we may rule the floor out too. Now, Gordon, you’ve four walls to
choose from—one with the door in it, one opposite with the windows in
it, one with the fireplace in it, and one blank, where the book-case
stands. Which are you betting on?”
“I’m not betting on any. But I’m maintaining that the door wall is the
one to search first, because we’ve only to open the door to see what
thickness it is.”
“There’s something in that. Hullo! The door does stand in a bit of a
recess. Where’s that tape measure? A foot and a half—hardly good
enough, is it? You see, if you tap the panelling here the sound is
quite dull, and that means there’s brick behind the panelling. And
there’s something thicker than mere plaster on the passage side too.
The mysterious gentleman can’t be quite as thin as all that. No bulges
in the wall, except of course that big oak chest. Do you know what’s
inside that chest, Reeves?”
“Yes, I ken that chest, it’s as full as can be
With my own odds and ends, and it’s all full of drawers,
And the key’s on the mantelpiece if you don’t believe me
With his hounds and his horn in the morning,”
was the reassuring, if not very metrical, reply.
“Then that does for the wall. Now, the window wall’s thick; you can
see that from the window recesses. On the other hand, it’s got to
carry the thickness of the outer wall, and the outer walls of Tudor
buildings are generally pretty thick. Artillery, you see, had
abolished the castle idea, but from force of habit they went on making
their outside walls thick, because you never knew what might happen.
And of course some of these brick houses did stand siege—you know
Aston Hall, I expect, in Birmingham. It sounds genuine when you tap
it, doesn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Gordon, listening. “Besides, if you come to think of it,
this house is pre-Reformation. There was no reason why they should
want a secret passage in it when it was built. But when the bad times
started, and they wanted a refuge for the priests, the man who came to
build the hiding-place wouldn’t play any tricks with a great solid
outside wall. He would surely run up a false partition between two
rooms.”
“Admirable,” said Carmichael. “It looks as if we should have to
trespass on Reeves’ neighbours. Reeves, who lives in the rooms next
yours?”
“The one on the left,” sang Reeves, “is Colonel Steele;
I fancy you both must know him,
And Mr. Murdoch’s on the right,
He plays the ’cello, blow him!
Both of them work in London Town,
So they’re both of them out this morning;
Of that there is no matter of doubt,
No possible, probable shadow of doubt,
No manner of doubt whatever.”
“Good,” said Gordon. “I’ll step the rooms, shall I, while you step the
passage? We hardly need the tape-measure yet.”
“Better do both, if you won’t mind; then the pace will be the same.”
And Carmichael busied himself in wandering round the room looking for
cracks till Gordon reappeared. “Well,” he said, “what news?”
“The fireplace wall, I fancy,” said Gordon. “From the door of Colonel
Steele’s room to the door of this, walking down the passage, it takes
twelve strides. Inside his room, I only take five strides to the wall.
Inside this room, I take a bit over five strides to the same wall.
Therefore there must be a thickness of about a pace and a half between
Colonel Steele’s room and Reeves’. Now one comes to think of it, he
wouldn’t hear Murdock’s ’cello if there was that thickness the other
side.”
“A pace and a half? The priests must have been on the thin side. Yes,
that would be it: there must be a length of about ten feet from the
fireplace to the wall on the side of the fireplace opposite to the
window. Somewhere in that ten feet we’ve got to find the spring.”
“Good heavens!” said Gordon suddenly, “suppose there’s a sliding
panel.”
“A man couldn’t get through one of these panels—not even you, Gordon,
in your well-known human-cobra act,” said Reeves, who had stopped
singing for the moment.
“No, but a man might put his arm through it, and take the photograph
away, and put another in its place, while the people in the room were
closely occupied—arranging their hands at bridge, for example.”
“You’ve got it!” said Carmichael. “But why, why?” He and Gordon both
went to the spot where the photograph had rested on the cornice two
nights before. There was a crack near it, through which it might be
possible for a man standing in the dark beyond to keep a watch on the
inside of the room, but this crack seemed to hold no further secret.
It was Gordon who eventually, fingering the little mouldings on the
lower side of the cornice, found one which pushed upwards, acting as a
sort of latch. A little tug at the remaining mouldings made the panel
turn sideways and disclose a triangular opening of a few inches
across, through which Reeves’ vociferous rendering of “Annie Laurie”
burst into the stillness of the priests’ hiding-place.