Once:
“Oh, then he'll have no one near. You can hear him sobbing like a child. When he's worst you'li hear him, still nights, howlin' and screamin' like a lost soul.”
Again:
“Clean-fleshed as a child and no more hairy than you or me.” Again:
“Fiddle? No violinist can beat him. I've listened hours. It makes you think of your sins. An' then it'll change an' you remember your first sweetheart, an' spring rains and flowers, an' when you was a child on your mother's knee. It tears your heart out.”
The two phrases that seemed to mean most were: “He won't stan' any interference.”
And:
“Never a lock touched till daylight after he's once locked in.”
“Now what do you think?” Thwaite asked me.
“It sounds,” I said, “as if the place were a one-patient asylum for a lunatic with long lucid intervals.”
“Something like that,” Thwaite answered, “but there seems to be more in it than that. I can't make all the things I hear fit. Appleshaw said one thing that runs in my head:
“Seem' him in the suds give me a turn:'
And Kitworth said once:
“It was the bright colors alongside of it that made my blood run cold.” And Appleshaw said more than once, in varying words, but always with the same meaning tone:
“You'll never get over bein' afraid of him. But you'll respect him more and more, you'll almost love him. You won't fear him for his looks, but for his awful wisdom. He's that wise, no man is more so.”
Once Kitworth answered: “I don't envy Sturry locked in there with him.”
“Sturry nor none of us that's his most trusted man for the time bein' is not to be envied,” Appleshaw agreed. “But you'll come to it, as I have, if you're the man I take you for.”
“That's about all I got from listening,” Thwaite went on, “the rest I got from watching and scouting. I made sure of the building they call the Pavilion, that's his usual home. But sometimes he spends his nights in one or the other of the towers, they stand all by themselves. Sometimes the lights are all out after ten o'clock or even nine; then again they're on till after midnight. Sometimes they come on late, two o'clock or three. I have heard music too, violin music, as Appleshaw described it, and organ music, too; but no howling. He is certainly a lunatic, judging by the statuary.”
“Statuary?” I queried.
“Yes,” Thwaite said, “statuary. Big figures and groups, all crazy men with heads like elephants or American eagles, perfectly crazy statuary. But all well-done. They stand all about the park. The little, square building between the Pavilion and the green tower is his sculpture studio.”
“You seem to know the place mighty well,” I said.
“I do,” Thwaite assented, “I've gotten to know it well. At first I tried nights like this. Then I dared starlight. Then I dared even moonlight. I've never had a scare. I've sat on the front steps of the Pavilion at one o'clock of starlight night and never been challenged. I even tried staying in all day, hiding in some bushes, hoping to see him.”
“Ever see him?” I inquired.
“Never,” Thwaite answered, “I've heard him though. He rides horseback after dark. I've watched the horse being led up and down in front of the Pavilion, till it got too dark to see it from where I was hid. I've heard it pass me in the dark. But I could never get the horse against the sky to see what was on it. Hiding and getting downhill of a road, close to it, don't go together.”
“You didn't see him the day you spent there?” I insisted.
“No,” Thwaite said, “I didn't. I was disappointed too. For a big auto purred up to the Pavilion entrance and stood under the porte cochere. But when it spun round the park there was nobody in it, only the chauffeur in front and a pet monkey on the back seat.”
“A pet monkey!” I exclaimed.
“Yes,” he said. “You know how a dog, a Newfoundland, or a terrier, will sit up in an auto and look grand and superior and enjoy himself? Well, that monkey sat there just like that turning his head one way and the other taking in the view.”
“What was he like?” I asked.
“Sort of dog-faced ape,” Thwaite told me, “more like a mastiff.” Rivvin grunted.
“This isn't business,” Thwaite went on, “we've got to get down to business. The point is the wall is their only guard, there's no dog, perhaps because of the pet monkey as much as anything else. They lock Mr. Eversleigh up every night with only one valet to take care of him. They never interfere whatever noise they hear or light they see, unless the alarm is sent out and I have located the alarm wires you are to cut. That's all. Do you go?”
Rivvin was sitting close to me, half on me. I could feel his great muscles and the butt of his pistol against my hip.
“I come with you,” I said. “Of your own accord?” Thwaite insisted. The butt of that pistol moved as Rivvin breathed. “I come of my own accord,” I said.
Afoot Thwaite led as confidently as he had driven the car. It was the stillest, pitchiest night I ever experienced, without light, air, sound or smell to guide anyone: through that fog Thwaite sped like a man moving about his own bedroom, never for a second at a loss.
“Here's the place,” he said at the wall, and guided my hand to feel the ring-bolt in the grass at its foot. Rivvin made a back for him and I scrambled up on the two. Tip-toe on Thwaite's shoulders I could just finger the coping.
“Stand on my head, you fool!” he whispered.
I clutched the coping. Once astraddle of it I let down one end of the silk ladder. “Fast!” breathed Thwaite from below.
I drew it taut and went down. The first sweep of my fingers in the grass found the other ring- bolt. I made the ladder fast and gave it the signal twitches. Rivvin came over first, then Thwaite. Through the park he led evenly. When he halted he caught me by the elbow and asked:
“Can you see any lights?”
“Not a light,” I told him.
“Same here,” he said, “there are no lights. Every window is dark. We're in luck.” He led again for a while. Stopping he said only:
“Here's where you shin up. Cut every wire, but don't waste time cutting any twice. The details of his directions were exact. I found every handhold and foothold as he had schooled me. But I needed all my nerve. I realized that no heavyweight like Rivvin or Thwaite could have done it. When I came down I was limp and tottery.
“Just one swallow!” Thwaite said, putting a flask to my lips. Then we went on. The night was so black and the fog so thick that I saw no loom of the building till we were against its wall.
“Here's where you go in,” Thwaite directed.
Doubly I understood why I was with them. Neither could have squeezed through that aperture in the stone. I barely managed it. Inside, instead of the sliding crash I had dreaded, I landed with a mere crunch, the coal in that bin was not anthracite. Likewise the bin under the window was for soft-coal. I blessed my luck and felt encouraged. The window I got open without too much work. Rivvin and Thwaite slid in. We crunched downhill four or five steps and stood on a firm floor. Rivvin flashed his electric candle boldly round. We were between a suite of trim coal-bins and a battery of serried furnaces. There was no door at either end of the open space in which we stood. I had a momentary vision of the alternate windows and coal-chutes above the bins, of two big panels of shiny, colored tiling, of clear brick-work, fresh-painted, jetty iron and dazzling-white brass-ringed asbestos, of a black vacancy between two furnaces. Toward that I half heard, half felt Rivvin turn. During the rest of our adventure he led, Thwaite followed and I mostly tagged or groped after Thwaite, often judging of their position or movement by that combination of senses which is neither hearing nor touch, though partly both.
Rivvin's torch flashed again. We were in a cement-floored, brick-walled passage, with a door at each end and on the side facing us doors in a bewildering row. In the darkness that came after the flash I followed the others to
