The Man in the Passage
“Well,” said Gordon, “what do we do next?”
“The first thing,” said Carmichael, “is to shut up this hole again
exactly as it was. The next thing is to discuss what we do next. And,
Reeves, I think it might be best if you went on playing for a little.”
“If music be the food of detection,” agreed Gordon, “play on. Give us
excess of it, that surfeiting the mysterious gentleman behind the
panelling may sicken, and so die. Well, he can’t have come through
that hole, can he?”
“No,” said Carmichael, “but there’s certain to be another catch just
inside which will open the secret door. You see, that hole is
obviously for a man to put his arm through. And as the arm-hole opens
from this side, the catch of the door will clearly open from the
other. But, just personally, I don’t very much want to open that door
without, considering first what we’re going to find on the other side.
Is the man armed, for example? Is there likely to be another opening
he can escape through? I confess to an aversion from taking any
risks.”
“If he came here straight from the railway,” said Reeves from the
piano, “he wouldn’t be likely to have any fire-arms with him.”
“But you forget,” said Gordon, “he must have an accomplice outside;
somebody who brings him food—why not weapons too?”
“It’s a conceivable plan,” said Carmichael, “to keep a look-out and
catch this confederate of his. Because the confederate presumably uses
some other entrance, and if we found that . . .”
“We could wait at that end, and let Reeves go on playing the piano to
him; he couldn’t stick it much longer. No, that’s all very well, but I
really think we ought to do something at once, before this man sees
that there’s something up, and possibly makes a bolt for it. I know
the direct method sounds silly, but I propose that we should go in and
take a look round. I don’t mind going first.”
“I don’t see much good in all three of us going in. What happens if
our man breaks cover through the other entrance? You see, it may be a
member of the club all the time; who could turn up smiling at the
other end, and nobody have a right to question him.”
“One moment,” said Carmichael. “Now we come to think of it, we do know
where the other end of the passage was. We know that the old chapel
was the present billiard-room. Why not lock this door, and go down to
have a look at the billiard-room? You and Gordon can have a game, or
pretend to, while I take a look round the walls.”
This adjustment was agreed upon, and they found the billiard-room
unoccupied. It seemed, however, to show signs of recent habitation,
for the dust-cloth had been taken off the table, the balls were out,
and a cue laid across one corner as if to indicate that they were not
to be disturbed. But this was voted accidental: the red was on spot,
and the plain ball spotted in balk; spot was in balk, obviously as the
result of a deliberate miss. And a glance at the score-board showed
that spot had not scored, while plain had scored one from spot’s miss.
In fact, it appeared that two people had started a game, and
interrupted it after the first stroke, a miss in balk.
“Come on,” said Gordon: “nobody can want to have those balls left
undisturbed.” And the two proceeded to play, with a good deal of noisy
conversation, while Carmichael investigated the walls.
“You see,” he said, “the same old pattern of cornice in the panelling.
With any luck the spring will be the same.” And, sure enough, before
ten minutes were up he had identified the spring.
“That settles it,” said Gordon. “We’ll get Marryatt, and he and
Carmichael can keep watch outside the billiard-room door. Reeves and I
will go down the passage from upstairs, with an electric torch: my
experience of fighting in the dark is that the man who has got the
electric torch, so that he can see and can’t be seen, has got the
upper hand from the start.”
Marryatt was found without difficulty, and consented to mount guard
after a minimum of explanation. Carmichael was provided with a
revolver, chiefly _ad terrorem_, for he had no idea how to use it;
Marryatt, true to medieval principle, was only armed with a niblick.
Gordon took another revolver and an electric torch, and went back
again with Reeves to the upper opening. When the panel had been pushed
back, it needed but a little fumbling on the inner side to discover a
latch. When this was lifted, they found that the wall opposite them
yielded to the touch, and a whole section of the panelling turned on a
vertical axis, the right side of it coming outwards into the room, the
left vanishing into the passage. The work was of miraculous fineness,
and when they shut the door again they had difficulty in seeing where
the cracks came in the morticing of the old beams.
“Those priests were well hidden,” said Gordon. “I imagine the people
who hunted them out simply broke down all this stuff with hatchets.
But the Secretary could hardly approve of that. Otherwise, I suppose
we’re very much in the position of the Sheriff’s men.”
“And the man inside is very much in the position of the priest.”
“Except for one circumstance.”
“Namely?”
“Guilt,” said Gordon.
“Well, what happens next?”
“A little Dutch courage.” Gordon helped himself to a liberal glass of
neat whisky. “If I were Carmichael, you would have a little lecture at
this point on the origin of the phrase ‘Dutch courage.’ Dating, you
see, my dear Reeves, from the seventeenth century, the last time when
we were seriously at war with the Dutch. Meanwhile, I wish we were
still at war with the Germans, and this were a German dug-out. Because
then we should simply stand at the entrance with a bomb and tell them
to come out. But there again I suppose the Secretary wouldn’t be best
pleased—really, he’s becoming a nuisance, that Secretary.”
“You still haven’t told me how we’re going to proceed.”
“We proceed with me in front and you behind. I have the revolver, you
have the electric torch. You hold it at arm’s length, just in front of
my shoulder. That ought to puzzle the other man if it comes to
shooting. Conversation will be conducted in a low tone of voice. If we
find nobody there, we emerge at the billiard-room end, and tell
Carmichael he’s a fool.”
“Good. I’m not really certain, when all’s said and done, that I really
want to meet this man. Curiosity has its limits, I find.”
“Well, are you ready? Flash the light into the passage as soon as I
open the door. Then let me go in first, and follow up close.”
The passage was startlingly high, having the whole height of the outer
room. It was so narrow that you instinctively edged sideways along it,
though there was just room to walk breast-forward and avoid contact
with the cobweb-matted walls. It began to descend almost immediately,
by a series of wooden steps; and by a rough calculation Gordon made
out that they were below the level of Reeves’ floor by the time they
had reached the parallel of Reeves’ inner wall. At this point they had
to stoop, a circumstance which rather confused their plan of campaign;
and it was clear that this part of the hiding-place was substracted,
not from the thickness of the walls but from the depth of the floor.
There was a sharp turn to the right, which showed that they were now
following the course of the passage which led past Reeves’ room. The
dust on the floor of the passage was thick and fine, easily showing
the traces of confused, but recent, human footprints.
Quite suddenly the passage opened out to the left, and at the same
time a very meagre ray of light from outside attracted their
attention. They found a chamber some seven feet square, with a tiny
squint to let in the light, from some unnoticeable chink in the
brickwork of the outer wall. The height of this chamber was still such
that a full-grown man could not stand up without stooping, but the
presence of light and air made it contrast agreeably with the passage
outside. Some attempt, too, had been made to sweep the floor, the dust
being all brushed up into a pile at one corner. There could be no
doubt that this chamber had been the refuge of hunted priests three
centuries back; no doubt, either, that it had been the refuge of a
hunted man within the last few days past.
Of the former occupation, indeed, there were few signs. A scratch had
been made now and again in the plaster of the walls, giving a name in
initials—a tourist’s trick, but rescued from vulgarity by the
circumstances of its origin, and by the addition of a few Christian
symbols—a Cross several times, and once the IHS monogram. Just where
the light of the little window fell strongest, a few lines of pious
doggerel had been scrawled, difficult to read in their crabbed
seventeenth-century handwriting. A sconce for a candle, nailed into
the wall, was the only solid monument left of these distant memories.
The eye was more immediately challenged by the evidences of a recent
visitor’s presence. One expected a rude pallet of straw; a simpler
resting-place had been contrived with three cushions obviously looted
from the club lounge. There was a candle-end stuck in an empty
claret-bottle, and two candles in reserve. There were numerous
cigarette-ends thrown carelessly on and around the dust-heap at the
corner; all these were of a common and undistinctive brand. There was
a rather crumpled copy of Friday’s _Daily Mail_, probably derived from
the same source as the cushions. There was a tin of boot-polish and a
brush, as if the stranger had been careful about his appearance even
in these singular surroundings. These relics Reeves quickly reviewed
with absorbed interest, and then turned to Gordon in despair.
“All these traces,” he said, “and not one that you could call a clue.
If the man has escaped us, he has escaped us without leaving a
solitary hint of his identity.”
“That hardly surprises me,” said Gordon. “Of course the man has been
in a sense your guest, but you could hardly expect him to sit down and
write you a Collins.”
“One might have expected one crow of triumph.”
“Perhaps that was one in the billiard-room.”
“In the billiard-room?”
“Yes, somebody had left you a miss in balk.”
“Do you really think . . .”
“Oh, I don’t know. Let’s go on exploring.”
All this time, except for their own whispers, there had been no noise
in the secret passage. Through the little window sounds came from a
distance, rarefied as sounds are when they come through a small
opening. A motor-cycle hooted several times: somebody shouted “Fore!”
on the links: far below (as it seemed) somebody was filling a bucket.
They crept out again into the passage, the torch switched on again:
for some twenty paces they were on the level, then they began to
descend, and almost immediately the ceiling grew higher above
them—they were in a wall-space instead of a floor-space once more.
Just as they reached the foot of the steps, an unforeseen development
threw all their plans into confusion—the passage branched in two
directions, one branch going straight on, the other turning off
sharply to the right.
“What do we do here?” whispered Reeves, flashing the torch up either
corridor in turn. “Whichever way we go, it seems to me, we may be
taken from the rear.”
“I know; we must chance it. We can’t separate, because we’ve only got
one torch. We’ll try the branch that goes straight on, but be ready to
turn round at a moment’s notice.”
This passage, after a short distance, seemed to terminate in a blank
wall. But there was a crack in the wall and Gordon, bending down, saw
through the crack the billiard-room as they had left it a quarter of
an hour ago, the balls still in position, the door still shut behind
which Carmichael and Marryatt were on guard.
“Switch the light higher up,” he whispered.
Surely Reeves’ torch was giving more light than usual? It seemed to
have suddenly doubled its brightness. And then, just as he realized
that another torch had been turned on from behind them, a strange
voice came out of the darkness:
“Now then, you there, I’ve got you covered. You this side, drop that
torch. . . . That’s right: now, you in front, put that revolver
down. . . . Now turn and go back the way you came.”
It was humiliating, but there was nothing to be done. They had been
taken in the rear by somebody coming up the other arm of the passage;
they could see nothing of him, looking straight into the light of his
torch. He stood at the junction of the two branches to let them pass,
still invisible: as they went back on their tracks, Gordon had a wild
idea of doubling into the priests’ room, but he saw it would be
hopeless. He would be unarmed, caught in a trap, with a man who was
probably already a murderer covering him with a revolver. They went
on, an ignominious procession, right up to the opening in Reeves’
room, which they had left ajar behind them.
“Step right out,” said the voice, “and don’t stir till I tell you.”
Obediently they crept out into Reeves’ room, expecting the stranger to
shut the door behind them and fasten it in some way still unknown to
them. It was a surprise to both of them when the secret entrance was
once more blocked with the shadow of a human form, and they were
followed into the daylight by a quite unmistakable policeman.