I
Mayes's stronghold was taken, but Mayes had escaped us once again; the
cage was in our hands, but the bird had flown.
Martin Hewitt, however, had his plans, as he was soon to show. The
recovery of the Admiralty code was a good stroke, and was a satisfactory
ending to an important case; but that, and even the capture of the
curious premises behind the Barbican, made but a halting-place in his
pursuit of Mayes, and as soon as I was in some degree recovered from my
struggle, and the captured place had been hastily searched, the chase
was resumed without a moment's delay; and that adventure was entered
upon which saw the end of the Red Triangle and its unholy doings--which
came terribly near to seeing the end of Hewitt himself, in fact.
I have not described the den near the Barbican with any great
particularity, but I have said that the office, accessible from the open
street, was only connected with the hidden premises behind--premises, as
was afterwards discovered, held under a separate tenancy--by an
easily-shifted ladder. It was in these hidden premises, approached by
the maze of courts and the stable-yard, that the main evidences of
Mayes's way of life were observable. The passage where my wrist had been
locked to the wall, and the room or cellar in which Plummer had been
confined, were the only parts of the lower premises fitted for the
detention of prisoners, with the exception of one very low and wholly
unlighted cellar, entered by a trapdoor and a very steep flight of brick
steps. This place smelt horribly faint and stagnant; but it produced on
my mind, both then and when I examined it later, an effect of horror and
repulsion more than could be accounted for by the smell alone. Of its
history nothing was discovered, and perhaps the feeling (though others
experienced it as well as myself) was the effect of mere fancy; but I
have never got rid of a conviction that that black cellar, or rather
pit--for it was very narrow--had been the instrument of crimes never to
be told.
There were one or two rooms sparely furnished--one as a bedroom, a
larger room, with a long table, a sofa, and several chairs; and in one
of the smaller rooms was found a stove, ladles and crucibles for the
melting down of metals--gold or silver. It was in this same room also
that the table stood, in the drawers of which were found papers, letters
and formulæ--things giving more than a hint of the use to which Mayes
had put his friendship with Mr. Jacob Mason, for of every possible
manner and detail in which science--more particularly the science of
chemistry--could aid in the commission of crime, there were notes in
these same drawers.
But most of these things were observed in detail later. The thing that
set us once more on the trail of Mayes, that very night and that very
hour, was found in the isolated office facing the street. It was a
cheque-book, quite full of unused cheques.
"This cheque-book," said Hewitt to Inspector Plummer and myself, "was in
the drawer below that in which we discovered the Admiralty code. The
Eastern Consolidated is the bank, as you see--Upper Holloway branch. Now
we must follow this at once, before waiting to search any further. There
may be something more important as a clue, or there may not, but at any
rate, while we are looking for it we are losing time. This may bring us
to him at once."
"You mean that he may have some address in Holloway," suggested
Plummer, "and we may get it from the bank?"
"There's that possibility, and another," Hewitt answered. "He has had to
bolt without warning or preparation, with nothing but the clothes he ran
in--probably very little money. Money he will want at once, and he would
rather not wait till the morning to get it; if he can get it at once it
will mean thirteen or fourteen hours' start at least. More, he will know
very well that this place will be searched, that this cheque-book will
be discovered soon enough, and that consequently the bank will be
watched. This is what he will do--what he is doing now, very likely. He
will knock up the resident manager of that bank and try to get a cheque
cashed to-night. I don't think that can be done; in which case he will
probably try to make some arrangement to have money sent him. Either
way, we must be at the Upper Holloway branch of the Eastern Consolidated
Bank as soon as a hansom can get us there."
Thus it was settled, and Hewitt and Plummer went off at once, leaving
Plummer's men, with the City police, in charge of the raided premises;
leaving some of them also to make inquiries in the neighbourhood. Mr.
Victor Peytral had shown himself anxious to accompany Hewitt and
Plummer, but had been dissuaded by Hewitt. I guessed that Hewitt feared
that some hasty indiscretion on the part of this terribly wronged man
might endanger his plans. Peytral, however, seemed tractable enough, and
left immediately after them; he had business, he said, which he expected
would occupy him for a day or two, and when it was completed he would
see us again.
As for myself I only remained long enough to ascertain that the police
could find no trace of the direction of Mayes's flight in the immediate
neighbourhood. They had little to aid them. He had gone without a hat,
and his dress was in some degree disordered by his struggle with me; but
the latter defect he might easily have remedied in the courts as he ran,
and they could gather no tidings of a hatless man. So I took my way to
my office, my wrist growing stiffer and more painful as I went, so that
I was not sorry to arrange for another member of the staff to take my
duty for the night, and to get to bed a few hours earlier than usual,
after the day's fatigue and excitement.