"Don't apologise," she said. "I am a great deal more afraid of
rats than I am of human beings."
We had passed into the back kitchen or scullery.
"He has been here," she said.
"How do you know?"
"By the tallow trail. The guttering candle has left its traces here."
She pointed out three blobs of tallow on the edge of the sink, and
turned the light of the bull's-eye full on the trap. Then she passed
her hand carefully over the surface and drew it away. A few
exceedingly small damp atoms of pulpy water adhered to her palm.
Dorcas examined the atoms carefully. "Probably red on one side and
white on the other," she said. "I wonder where the bottles are?"
"What bottles?"
There were two short wooden shelves on each side of the sink. From
the one on the left-hand side Dorcas took a chisel. It was evidently
new, by the handle, but the edge was slightly rusty.
"The bottles that the labels have been scraped from with this
chisel," she said. "The labels have been damped at the sink. It is
the wet on the label that has rusted the chisel."
Suddenly she stooped down, and let the lantern flash round the room.
Something among some rubbish in one corner attracted her attention.
It was a small empty bottle, about the size of the bottles in which
chemists sell toothache tincture. She picked the bottle up and
examined it carefully.
"It has been washed out," she said, "and there is nothing to tell us
what it contained."
"Does it matter?" I exclaimed. "It is hardly likely that Mr. Judkins
Barraclough came here to wash bottles. That may have been done by
the former tenants."
"No, bottles have been scraped here recently. Fragments of the
pulped paper are still in the sink, and that chisel is probably
one of the tools that the Indian gentleman ordered from the
ironmonger's."
"Well, whatever the bottle contained we can't find it out here,"
I said.
"No, let's go into the front kitchen."
In the front kitchen there were two cupboards and a kitchen dresser.
The cupboards were not quite empty--on one shelf was a packet of
coffee and a bag of sugar. On the kitchen dresser was a brown paper
package open at one end. It contained eleven boxes of ordinary
matches--the twelfth half empty, was lying on one of the dresser
shelves.
"The coffee bothers me," said Dorcas, "but the matches show that
this is where the bottle washer lighted his candles of an evening.
The candles themselves can't be far off."
She looked at the dresser drawers. They had round wooden painted
handles. She turned the light of the bull's-eye on to each handle.
Then she touched the handle of the top left-hand drawer.
"This is one he uses," she said.
"How can you tell that?" I said, gazing curiously on the handle, and
failing to see any indication which could have guided Dorcas in
her selection.
"Look at this handle carefully," she said, "and you will see a tiny
atom of paper still adhering to it. The person who washed bottles
has come from the sink with a wet hand and opened that drawer. A
scrap of the label has adhered to his hand and come off on the
drawer handle, as he grasped it to pull it open. And now I am sure
that the person who washed the bottles and opened this drawer was
Mr. Judkins Barraclough."
I stared at Dorcas in amazement. "How can the drawer handle tell
you that?" I exclaimed.
"You remember that Barraclough's right arm was evidently too painful
to use, and he was using his left the night we saw him get out of
the cab. Well, the rusty chisel was thrown after use on the left-hand
side of the sink, and here the drawer has been pulled open with the
left hand."
"Surely a left hand doesn't mark itself on a drawer handle."
"No, but this drawer stuck and was difficult to open. The person
trying it rested one hand--a wet and dirty one--on the dresser. See,
here are five dirty finger-marks on the _right-hand_ side of the
drawer."
I looked where Dorcas had pointed, and indications were undoubtedly
there. Dorcas had some difficulty in pulling the drawer open, and
had to rest her own hand on the dresser. She tried with her left
hand, and her right hand then fell exactly on the finger-marks.
When the drawer at last yielded we looked eagerly inside it. There
were two packets of common candles and back in the corner of the
drawer half a dozen small bottles similar to the one we had found
empty in the sink.
Dorcas drew them out and examined them carefully. "All red labels,
you see, with 'Poison' printed on them, 'Hydrate of Chloral' written
above. They have all been purchased from different chemists--though
one doesn't have to sign for chloral. Mr. Judkins Barraclough is
using chloral for some purpose in this house, and after each bottle
is used he removes the label."
"Why should he do that?"
"Well, he may not think it wise to leave empty labelled chloral
bottles about. He is a cunning man, and is guarding against
contingencies."
"But what can he be doing with chloral here--in an empty house?"
"We may find out before we leave it. At any rate, let us see if he
uses any of the upper rooms."
"We haven't searched the coal cellar yet," I said, suddenly
recollecting the Euston-square mystery, and the discovery of the
corpse of the poor "Canterbury Belle."
"To get to the coal cellar you have to go out into the area in
these houses," replied Dorcas. "He wouldn't do that."
"The wine cellar, then?"
Dorcas shook her head. "I looked at the door of that as we came by.
It was ajar. If there was anything to conceal there it would be
shut and locked."
"But the cases of brandy----"
"May be there--we'll go and see."
The wine cellar was small and filled with old rubbish evidently
left behind by the last tenants.
But the brandy cases were there. One was opened and the lid
off. There were only six bottles left. The straw envelopes of the
other six lay on the floor.
"Where are the empty bottles?" I said. "We ought to look for them."
"Yes--that is what we will do next. I have an idea they are upstairs."
"Why?"
"As we came down the kitchen stairs I noticed a short straw lying on
one of them. When the bottle was being taken out of the straw
envelope in the cellar a loose straw or two caught on the clothes of
the person handling it. As he went up the stairs the straw became
disengaged by the action of walking and fell. We've searched the
parlours carefully--now let us go upstairs to the first floor."
There were two doors on the first floor. We tried the front room one
first and found it unlocked and the room quite empty.
"Now for the back room," said Dorcas.
We went out on to the landing and tried the back room door.
_It was locked._
"If there is anything more to be found it will be here," exclaimed
Dorcas, her face, which had been pale until now, suddenly
flushing with excitement.
"What can we do?--burst the door open?"
"Yes--I came prepared for emergencies."
Dorcas produced an instrument which is technically known as a
"jemmy" from her bag and handed it to me.
I had once burst open a door, but I was not a skilled workman, so it
was a good ten minutes before the door yielded, bursting open with a
crash and tearing away with it a portion of the lock, which fell
with a clatter to the ground.
As the door fell it seemed as though there was an echo of it
downstairs.
"What's that?" exclaimed Dorcas. "It sounded like the front door
shutting."
"Nonsense," I said, "it's the echo--the house is empty."
Dorcas had turned her lantern on the staircase, and was peering
over the balustrade. All was silent as the grave.
"I must have been mistaken," she said. "Good heavens, there can't
have been someone in the house all this time--someone who has
slipped past us and escaped. If I thought that I----"
She paused and uttered a little cry. She had turned the lantern
right round, and it lit up the room, the door of which we had just
burst open.
As the light of the bull's-eye dimly illuminated the apartment an
extraordinary sight met our eyes. The centre of the room was
entirely occupied by what looked like a huge wire cage. Wire netting
nearly six feet high was stretched from side to side of the room on
ropes which were fastened in the walls by iron rings. Across the
inside, at the top and bottom of what was practically a wired-off
passage was wire netting of the same height securely fixed and
lashed firmly in its place, and to prevent the occupant of the cage
from climbing over the top it was roofed in with a double thickness
of coarse sacking securely fastened to the wirework. The floor was
covered with indiarubber mats nailed down to keep them in place.
"Good gracious!" I exclaimed. "Is it a menagerie, or a cage for some
wild animal, or what?"
Suddenly Dorcas grasped my arm, and put her finger to her lips.
In one corner of the cage, on a rug, covered over by a scarlet
blanket, lay a woman.
"She must be dead!" I exclaimed, starting back with horror. "Only a
corpse could sleep through the crash of that door."
"No," said Dorcas, creeping up close to the wire netting. "She is
breathing--see, the blanket rises and falls."
"What can it mean? Is she some mad woman whom Barraclough is
keeping here?"
Dorcas did not answer. She was gazing earnestly at the face of the
sleeper. It was the face of a woman of about forty--a dark woman
who must once have been strikingly handsome. Dorcas let the light
fall upon it for a minute or two, but the sleeper made no movement.
Her breathing was strangely heavy. Suddenly Dorcas touched my arm
and pointed to an open bottle which stood near the rug.
"Brandy," she said. "That's where the six bottles have gone to."
"Is she in a drunken stupor, do you think?"
"Drunken, perhaps, is hardly the word," replied Dorcas; "you forget
the empty chloral bottles."
"You think that the chloral is for her?"
"Yes; this woman is under the influence of it now. A man or a woman
who takes chloral would sleep through an earthquake. A drunken man
or woman would certainly have been startled by the noise we made
just now. In some mysterious way she has been got into this house,
and is being kept here a prisoner by Mr. Judkins Barraclough. He
probably dissolves a dose of chloral and puts it into each bottle
of brandy he brings to the poor creature."
"What can be the object of that?"
"The chloral is given, I take it, with the same object as this wire
cage has been built around her (probably while she lay helpless and
insensible under the influence of the drug)--to keep her from
making a noise, shouting or beating against the walls, or going to
the windows and attracting the attention of the neighbours. The man
who has got this woman in his power comes here daily, but probably
only after dark, and has to leave her alone at night and for many
hours during the day. She is caged in to keep her from beating the
walls, and she is dosed with chloral in order to keep her from
moving about or making the slightest noise."
"And the object?"
"To let her kill herself with the brandy."
"Then why the chloral?--that sends her to sleep and prevents her
from drinking as much as she would."
"If she were left with the brandy alone she would become violent and
be able to shriek. She might in an access of delirium tear down her
cage and get free. No--kept here without food and with a plentiful
supply of brandy she will die slowly of alcoholic poisoning. But
she must die quietly--hence the chloral."
"What an infamous villain!"
"Yes, and a desperate one. This is the woman who bit him that night.
There must have been a violent struggle after he got her here. This
woman is probably his first wife. There cannot be any other reason
for Mr. Barraclough's mysterious proceedings."
"But now we have found her," I exclaimed, "what do you propose
to do?"
"We must break through this netting, and try to rouse her first,"
replied Dorcas. "Her gaoler doesn't go near her--see here is where
he evidently picks up the corner of the network to put in the
bottles of drugged brandy. The nail has been pulled out and
hammered in again several times."
Dorcas went to the shutters, which were closed, and wrenched off
the iron bar. "Take this," she said, "and break the netting down
sufficiently for us to get in. It will make less noise than
forcing out the staples."
I took the bar, and several violent blows broke the lower portion of
the cage loose from the fastenings in the floor. Then I pulled it up
sufficiently high to allow Dorcas to crawl underneath.
"This must be the woman whose clothes are downstairs in the
cupboard," I said. "Fancy a woman reduced to such poverty as that--
the wife of a millionaire. Why, she must have been a homeless
outcast."
Dorcas had gone to the sleeping woman's side. Gently she turned
down the top of the scarlet blanket. Then she started back in
astonishment. The woman was fully dressed in clothes of the
best quality.
Dorcas lifted the almost lifeless arm from the sleeper's side and
pointed to her fingers. On one was a worn wedding-ring, and above it
a diamond ring. A gold bangle set with jewels was round her wrist.
"What does it mean?" said Dorcas, knitting her brows. "The rags
concealed in the cupboard downstairs never belonged to _this_ woman."
At that moment a church clock struck five.
"Quick!" cried Dorcas, thrusting Mr. Barraclough's keys through the
broken wirework into my hand. "You must go. The cab will be waiting
in Mabledon Place. Go to Berkeley Square at once and put the keys in
the letter-box. I wouldn't have that man suspect anything for all
the money in the world!"
"And you?"
"I shall stay here. Come back as soon as you can. Ring the bell
gently and I will let you in. Ah! wait a moment!"
She tore a leaf from her note-book, and scribbled something in lead
pencil, then folded it, and gave it to me. It was addressed to a
doctor in Endsleigh Gardens.
"It's close by; call there on your way. Ring the doctor up and give
him this. He is an old friend of mine and will come at once. Then
go to Berkeley Square as fast as the horse can take you, and put
the keys in the letter-box."
There was nothing for it but to obey. When I closed the door of
No. --- softly behind me it was broad daylight, and the birds were
singing gaily in the trees.
As I reached the pavement I involuntarily turned back to take a
parting glance at the closely shuttered house in which I had left
Dorcas Dene alone with the caged woman.
As I did so I suddenly became aware of something which rooted me to
the spot, and paralysed me beyond the power of uttering a cry.
Crouching in the shadow of the next doorway was a dark man with
white hair, a closely-cropped white moustache, and gold spectacles.
_IX. THE CLOTHES IN THE CUPBOARD_
I stood for a moment paralysed. Could it be possible that standing
there watching me as I emerged from the house in Burton Crescent was
the mysterious Indian whom Dorcas Dene believed to be no other than
Judkins Barraclough himself? Judkins Barraclough in a false wig and
a moustache and a pair of gold spectacles.
Then suddenly I recollected the sound we had heard as of the
shutting of the front door. Someone _had_ been in the house at the
time. Someone had slipped past when we were in the front room, and
as the door of the room in which the drugged woman lay yielded with
a crash, that person had crept out into the street.
And that person was the man with the white hair and moustache, whose
dark eyes were gleaming at me through his gold spectacles now.
What was I to do? To seize the Indian and call for the police? I
hesitated to do that without Dorcas's authority. I went up the step
of No. ---, and rang the bell gently.