Pickering was essentially a man of action.
"We must go down that hole and explore," he said determinedly. "We must
know the whole of the secrets of this place before we go further.
Edwards, just slip round to the station and get that rope-ladder we used
in the Charlotte Street affair. Bring more rope, as it may be too
short. And bring P.C. Horton with you. Tell him to take his revolver.
Look sharp."
"Very well, sir," replied the man, who clambered over the settle and
down the stairs, leaving us there to await his return.
Time passed slowly in that dark, gruesome house, and at each noise we
halted breathlessly in expectation of the return of Parham or one of his
friends.
Returning to the room wherein Eric Domville had so gallantly defied his
enemies, we resumed our search, and from beneath the couch the constable
drew forth the square brown-paper parcel which Winsloe had obtained from
the house called Keymer, and handed over to Parham.
Pickering, in a trice, cut the string with his pocket-knife, and within
found a small square wooden box nailed down. The jemmy soon forced it
open, when there was revealed a large packet of papers neatly tied with
pink tape, which on being opened showed that they were a quantity of
negotiable foreign securities--mostly French.
"The proceeds of some robbery, most certainly," declared Pickering,
examining one after the other and inquiring of me their true character,
he being ignorant of French.
"I expect the intention is to negotiate them in the City," I remarked
after I had been through them and roughly calculated that their value
was about twenty thousand pounds.
"Yes. We'll put them back and see who returns to fetch them. There's
evidently a widespread conspiracy here, and it is fortunate, Mr Hughes,
that you've been able at last to fix the house. By Jove!" the inspector
added with a smile, "we ourselves couldn't have done better--indeed, we
couldn't have done as well as you did."
"I only hope that we shall discover what has become of my friend
Domville," I said. "I intend that his death shall not go unavenged. He
was in this room, I'll swear to that. I'd know his voice among ten
thousand."
"We shall see," remarked the officer, confidently. "First let us
explore and discover how they got rid of their victims. I only hope
nobody will return while we are below. If they do, Horton and Marvin
will arrest them. We'll take Edwards down with us."
While the constable Marvin repacked the precious box to replace it,
Pickering and myself went to the drawer and looked over the letters.
Many of them were unimportant and incomprehensible, until one I opened
written upon blue-grey notepaper bearing the heading: "Harewolde Abbey,
Herefordshire." It was in the well-known handwriting of Sybil Burnet!
Amazed, I read eagerly as follows:--
"Yes. Fred Kinghorne is here. He is an American, and beyond the
Marstons has, I believe, no friends in England. He is an excellent
bridge player and has won heavily this week. He has told me that he is
engaged to a girl named Appleton, daughter of a Wall Street broker, and
that she and her mother are to meet him in Naples on the twentieth, for
a tour in Italy. He leaves here next Saturday, and will stay at the
Cecil for ten days prior to leaving for Italy. He is evidently very
well off, and one of the reasons he is in England is to buy some
jewellery as a wedding present for his bride. The Marstons tell me that
he is the son of old Jacob Kinghorne, the great Californian financier.
I hope this information will satisfy you.--S."
Harewolde, as all the world knows, was one of the centres of the smart
set. The Marstons entertained the royalties frequently, and there were
rumours of bridge parties and high stakes. Why had Sybil given this
curious information? Had the young man Kinghorne been marked down as
one of the victims and enticed to that fatal house?
There was no envelope, and the commencement of the letter was abrupt, as
though it had been enclosed with some unsuspicious communication.
Having read it, I laid it down without comment, for it was my last
desire to incriminate the poor unhappy woman, who, shorn of her
brilliancy, was now leading such a strange and lowly life in that dull
South London street.
Yet could it be possible that she had acted for these blackguards as
their secret agent in society?
The suggestion held me stupefied.
At last Edwards ascended the stairs with Horton and another constable in
plain clothes, and scrambled across the settle to where we stood. He
carried in his hand a strong ladder of silken rope--which Pickering
incidentally remarked had once been the property of Crisp, the notable
Hampstead burglar--together with another lantern, a ball of string and a
length of stout rope.
Marvin and Edwards recrossed the improvised bridge, while Pickering,
Horton and myself remained upon the landing. Then, when we drew the
settle away the two men pressed upon the stairs, causing the whole to
move forward upon the hinges at the edge of the landing and disclosing
the black abyss. As soon as the pressure was released, however, the
stairs swung back into their place again, there being either a spring or
a counter-balancing weight beneath.
This was the first difficulty that faced us, but it was soon overcome by
inserting the settle when the stairs were pushed apart, thus keeping
them open. To the stout oak pillar which formed the head of the
banisters Pickering fixed the rope-ladder firmly, and with Marvin tried
its strength.
"I'll go down first, sir," volunteered Edwards. "You've got the
lantern. Will you light it and let it down by the string after me?"
So with all of us breathlessly excited the silken ladder was thrown
across to Edwards, whose round face beamed at the project of
subterranean exploration. Then, when the lamp was lit and tied upon the
string, he put his foot into the ladder, swung himself over the edge of
the stairs and descended into the darkness, Pickering lowering the lamp
after him.
We stood peering down at his descending figure, but could discern but
little save the glimmering of the light and the slow swinging of the
ladder, like a pendulum.
"Great Moses!" we heard him ejaculate in amazement.
Yet down, down, down he went until it became apparent that he must have
reached the end of the ladder, and now be sliding down the extra length
of rope which Pickering had attached.
"All right, sir!" came up his voice, sounding cavernous from the pitch
darkness. "It's a jolly funny place down here, an' no mistake. Will
you come down? I'm releasing the lantern. Send down another, please.
We'll want it."
Pickering hauled in the string, attached Marvin's bull's-eye to it, and
let it down again at once. The pit was of great depth, as shown by the
length of cord. Then with an agility which would have done credit to a
much younger man, he swung himself over on to the ladder.
"If you'd like to come down, Mr Hughes, you can follow me," he
exclaimed, as he disappeared into the darkness. "Horton, hold your
light over me. You two stay here. If anybody enters the place, arrest
them quickly."
"Very well, sir," answered the man Horton, and the inspector went deeper
down until only the trembling of the ladder betokened his presence
there.
"All right, Mr Hughes. Come down, but be careful," he cried up
presently, his voice sounding far away. "You'll have to slide down the
rope for the last twelve feet or so. Cling tight, and you'll be all
right."
I grasped the ladder, placed my foot into the first loop, and then with
the light held over me, went down, down, first into a place which seemed
large and cavernous, and presently down a kind of circular well with
black slimy walls which seemed to descend into the very bowels of the
earth.
Below I could hear the sound of rushing waters, but above them was the
inspector's encouraging voice, crying, "All right. Now then, take the
rope in your legs and slip straight down."
I did so, and a moment later found myself up to my knees in an icy cold
stream, which swept and gurgled about me.
Pickering and his assistant stood at my side, their lamps shining upon
the dark subterranean flood.
"Is this the place you remember?" asked the inspector, shining his
bull's-eye around and revealing that we were at the bottom of a kind of
circular well which had on either side two low arches or culverts. From
the right the water rushed in with a swirling current, and by the
opposite culvert it rushed out, gurgling and filling the arch almost to
its keystone. I saw that all the black slimy masonry was of long flat
stones--a relic of ancient London it seemed to be.
"This isn't the place where I found myself," I said, much surprised.
"No, I suppose not," remarked the inspector. "This is fresh water, from
a spring somewhere, and through that ancient culvert there's probably a
communication with the main sewer. When you fell, you were swept down
there and out into the main sewer at once--like a good many others who
have come down here. It's an awful death-trap. Look up there," and he
shone his lamp above my head.
"Don't you see that a bar of iron has been driven into the wall--and
driven there recently, too, or it would have rusted away long ago in
this damp."
"Well?" I said, not quite following him.
"That's been put there so that the victims, in falling from the great
height, should strike against it and be rendered unconscious before
reaching the water. Look. There's a bit of white stuff on it now--like
silk from a lady's evening dress!"
And sure enough I saw at the end of that iron bar a piece of white stuff
fluttering in the draught, the grim relic of some unfortunate woman who
had gone unconsciously to her death! The dank, gruesome place horrified
me. Its terrible secrets held all three of us appalled. Even Pickering
himself shuddered.
"To explore further is quite impossible," he said. "That culvert leads
into the main sewer, so we must leave its exploration to the sewermen.
Lots of springs, of course, fall into the sewers, but the exact spots of
their origin are unknown. They were found and connected when the sewers
were constructed, and that's all. My own opinion," he added, "is that
this place was originally the well of an ancient house, and that the
blackguards discovered it in the cellar, explored it, ascertained that
anything placed in it would be sucked down into that culvert, and then
they opened up a way right through to the stairs."
The inspector's theory appeared to me to be a sound one.
I expressed fear of the rising of the water with the automatic flushing
of the sewers, but he pointed out that where we stood must be on a
slightly higher level, judging from the way the water rushed away down
the culvert, while on the side of the well there was no recent mark of
higher water, thus bearing out his idea of a spring.
Edwards swarmed up the rope and managed to detach the piece of silk from
the iron bar. When he handed it to us we saw that though faded and
dirty it had been a piece of rich brocade, pale blue upon a cream
ground, while attached was a tiny edging of pale blue chiffon--from a
woman's corsage, Pickering declared it to be--perhaps a scrap of the
dress of the owner of that emerald necklet up above!
After a minute inspection of the grim ancient walls which rose from a
channel of rock worn smooth by the action of the waters of ages,
Pickering swarmed up the dangling rope, gained the ladder and climbed
back again, an example which I quickly followed, although my legs were
so chilled to the bone by the icy water that at first I found
considerable difficulty in ascending.
Having gained the landing and been followed by Edwards, we drew up the
ladder, removed the settle, allowed the fatal stairs to close again, and
then bridged it over as before.
While we had been below Horton, who was a practised carpenter, had
mended the latch of the front door, so that there should be no suspicion
of our entry. We all clambered across the settle, descended the stairs
to the basement, and were soon engaged in searching the downstairs rooms
and cellar. We had found that the communication between the head of the
well and the top of the house was a roughly-constructed shaft of boards
when, of a sudden, while standing at the foot of the kitchen stairs we
were startled by hearing the sharp click of a key in the lock of the
front door above.
In an instant we were silent, and stood together breathless and
listening. The dark slide slipped across the bull's-eye.
It was truly an exciting moment.
Pickering, followed by Edwards and Marvin, crept noiselessly up the
stairs, and while the person entering apparently had some difficulty
with the lock they waited in the darkness.
I stood behind the inspector, my heart beating quickly, listening
intently. It was an exciting moment standing ready in the pitch
blackness of that silent house of doom.
The latch caught, probably on account of its recent disarrangement, but
at last the key lifted it, the door opened, somebody entered the hall,
and quietly re-closed the door.