slightest movement echoed eerily. There was a damp musty smell in the place which I found unpleasantly tomb- like. But we paused here for scarcely a moment. We went hurrying upstairs, our footsteps rattling uncannily upon marble steps. Here for a moment we hesitated on a higher landing, flashing the light of the lamp about.
“This is the room,” I said, and indicated a closed door.
Stocco tried the handle; the door opened. Right ahead of me across the room beyond I saw a half-opened lattice. A moment later I was on the balcony from which the mysterious woman had dropped a rose to Rudolf Adion.
“This is where she stood!”
The detective shone a light all about us. The room was choicely paneled in some light wood and possessed what had once been a painted ceiling, now no more than a series of damp blotches where minute fungus grew.
“Shine the light down here,” I ordered excitedly. On the heavy dust of a parquet floor were slight but unmistakable marks of high-heeled shoes!
“God’s mercy, you were right!” Stocco exclaimed. Yes, I was right. This house was a tomb. Rudolph Adion had made an appointment with a creature of another world, a
No doubt the place was partly responsible, but as I stood there staring at my companion, and remembered how Nayland Smith had been smuggled out of life by the master magician called Dr Fu Manchu, I was prepared to believe that a dead woman moved among the living.
Palazzo Mori
We admitted the chief of police by the main door. It was heavily bolted but not locked. He was at least as nonplussed as I when the marks of little heels were pointed out to him in the room above.
“This,” he said, “is supernatural.”
Although disposed to agree with him I was determined to leave no stone unturned in my efforts to solve the mystery. Discounting her sorcerous origin for the moment and therefore her magical powers, how had Dr Fu Manchu’s accomplice got into this place, and how had she got out?
“Merely supernormal perhaps,” I suggested. “Everything has an explanation, after all.” I was trying desperately to restore my own self- confidence. “You know the history of these old buildings better than I do. Have you any explanation to offer of how a person could enter and leave the Palazzo Mori as undoubtedly someone entered and left it tonight?”
“I have no explanation to offer, Mr. Kerrigan,” said Colonel Correnti. His expression was almost pathetic. “None whatever.”
The second detective began to speak urgently and rapidly, and as a result:
“This officer tells me,” the colonel continued, “that at one time, but very, very long ago, there was an entrance to this old palace from the other side of the canal—I mean the Rio Mori, from which we entered.”
“I don’t think I follow you.”
“A passage—they were not uncommon in old days—under the Rio Mori, which of course is quite shallow. It seems that the boathouse of the family was on the opposite bank in those days, and for the convenience of the gondoliers this passage was made. It has been blocked up for at least a century.”
“That hardly seems to help us!”
“No, not at all. I think I know the place—an old stone shed.”
He spoke rapidly to his subordinate who replied with equal rapidity. “It was used, I am told, as a store by a house decorator for a time but is now empty again. No, my friend, this is useless. We must seek elsewhere for the solution of our mystery.”
Of our search of the old palace it is unnecessary that I give any account. It yielded nothing. Apart from those footprints in the upper room there was no evidence whatever to show that anyone had entered the building for many years. Certainly below the grand salon, where patches on the walls from which paintings had been removed, pathetically told of decayed grandeur, there were locked rooms.
To these we were unable to gain access, and it seemed pointless to attempt it. Examination of the locks clearly indicated that they had not been recently used. At this stage of the search I had given up hope.
We returned to police headquarters. There was no news. I turned aside to hide my despair. An officer who had remained in constant touch with the detectives in the Palazzo da Rosa reported that “Major Baden” had joined the guests for half an hour and had then excused himself on the grounds of urgent business, and had retired again to his own apartment.
“You see?” Colonel Correnti shrugged his shoulders. “We can do nothing.”
I tried to control my voice when I spoke:
“Do you really understand what is at stake? An ex-commissioner of Scotland Yard has been kidnapped, probably murdered. He is one of the highest officials of the British Secret Service. The most prominent figure in European politics, and I do not except Pietro Monaghani, is, beyond any shadow of doubt, in deadly peril. Are you sure, Colonel, that every available man is straining himself to the utmost, that every possible place has been searched, every suspect interrogated?”
“I assure you, Mr. Kerrigan, that every available man in Venice is either searching or watching tonight. I can do no more . . .”
I think during the next hour I must have plumbed the uttermost deeps of despair. I wandered about the gay streets of Venice like a ghost at a banquet, staring at lighted windows, into the faces of the passers-by until I began to feel that I was attracting public attention.
I returned to the hotel, went to my room and sat down on that settee where Ardatha had bewitched me with kisses.
How I cursed every moment of that stolen happiness! No contempt I had ever known for a fellow being could approach that which I had for myself. I conjured up a picture of Nayland Smith;
almost in my state of distraction I seemed to hear his voice. He was trying to tell me something, trying to direct me, to awaken in my dull brain some spark of enlightenment.
Had our cases been reversed what would
This idea seemed to give me a new coolness. Yes! what would he have done? I sat there, head buried in my hands, striving to think calmly.
That the dark woman had entered and left that ruined palace was a fact. Whoever or whatever she might be, of her presence there we had unassailable evidence. Our search had revealed no explanation of the mystery. But there were doors we had failed to open.
This would not have been Nayland Smith’s way!
He would never have been satisfied to leave the Palazzo Mori until those lower rooms had been examined. Nor would he have been content with the assertion of the chief of police that the ancient passage under the canal was blocked . . .
I sprang up.
This was the line of inquiry which Smith would have followed! I was sure of it. This should be my objective. A disheveled figure (I had not been undressed for thirty-six hours), once more I set out.
The ancient house of the gondoliers was easy to locate. It was solidly built of stone with three windows on the land side and a heavy padlocked door at the end. The narrow lane by which one approached it was dark and deserted. I had brought an electric torch, and I shot a beam through one of the broken windows. It showed a quantity of litter: fragments of wall paper, mortar boards and numerous empty paint cans. I inspected the padlock.
This bore evidence of use: it had recently been oiled!
But it was fast.
Greatly excited, I returned to the broken window and looked in again. The litter had not been disturbed, I could have sworn, for a considerable time—yet the door had recently been used.
My excitement grew. I thought that from some place, in this world or beyond, Nayland Smith had succeeded in inspiring me with something of his old genius for investigation. A great task lay to my hand. I determined to do it well.
I studied the padlock. I had no means of picking it, nor indeed any knowledge of that art. To crash a pane in
