Archer; Furs.
A long strip of a landing, the wall unbroken except for one door, of yellow-varnished oak with a Yale lock, at the side and toward the front On the landing, by the stairs, a window giving on a dingy two-foot air space between this and the next house.
He moved on to the floor above. Exactly the same, except that there was no sign on the door. Oak door and Yale lock; that was bad.
This might be Sedgwick & Co. Ltd., or it might be Madame Vanya. If it were the first whatever their business ! might be, the thing to do was to open the door and stroll in | with some casual question. He turned the knob, easing it over gently, with the same instinct. It was not locked. He opened it.
It was Sedgwick & Co., and they were theatrical costumiers.
One comprehensive glance showed him a long dusky room, apparently empty, with two windows overlooking the street on the narrow side. Wigs, of extraordinary life-likeness, loomed up on the narrow stems of their wooden blocks. In one corner stood a female lay figure, in a fur-trimmed costume of the nineties. High rows of shelves, with costumes pressed flat stretched along the opposite wall.
Then, as Holden was about to close the door, a voice spoke out of the empty air. That voice said, very distinctly:
'The secret of the vault'
Holden stood motionless, the door halfway open. It was as though he had caught that disembodied voice at the end of a sentence. For it continued, in the same agreeable way:
'Shall I tell you, between ourselves, how those coffins were really moved?'
A light flashed on somewhere at the rear of the room. And Holden, peering through the long crack between the hinges of the door, now understood.
The premises of Sedgwick & Co. comprised two rooms set in a line from front to back. In the rear room beyond an open door, someone was seated in front of a triple mirror—-his back to the communicating door; and a light had just been switched on above him.
The front room was heavily carpeted. Holden slipped in without noise, and looked.
Facing him in the mirror, past the shoulder of the person who sat in the rear room, was a countenance of fat repulsiveness: high colored, yet pock marked and heavy jowled, sagging of eye, leering like a satyr under the white court wig.
The face admired itself. It tilted up its chin, turning from side to side, pleased with the puffy cheeks. It cocked its head like a bird's. Repeated in the triple mirrors, its moppings and mowings flashed, slyly, from every angle. Then it elongated itself when hands appeared on either side; the eyes were punched out into black holes.
It was a mask. Out of it emerged the thoughtful face of Sir Danvers Locke.
'Not bad,' Locke commented. 'But the price is too high.'
'The price'' murmured another voice, in tones faintly shocked and reproachful. 'The price!'
It was a woman's voice, pleasant, between youth and middle-age, and unmistakably French.
'These masks,' the woman said, 'are the work of
'Yes. Quite.'
'They are his best work. They are the last work he has done before he died.' Her voice grew more reproachful. 'I have sent you a special telegram to come quickly and see them.'
'I know. And I'm grateful.' Locke drummed his fingers on the table of the mirrors. He glanced up, past the light shining on his gray hair, at the invisible woman. His tone changed. 'May I say, Mademoiselle Frey, that it is a great relief to come here and talk to you sometimes?'
'But it is a compliment!'
'You know nothing of me or my affairs. Beyond making sure my check is good, you don't want to know anything.'
In the mirror above his head there was the shadow of a shrug. Abruptly, as though this made matters easier, Locke spoke in French.
'I am not,' he said, 'a man who speaks easily at home or even among his friends. And I am much troubled.'
'Yes,' Mademoiselle Frey agreed quietly, also in French. 'One comprehends that. But monsieur was not serious about these . . . coffins?'
'Yes. Very serious.'
'I myself,' cried the woman, 'have interred my brother. It was an interment of the first class. The coffin —'
'The coffin of the lady in question,' said Locke, with his eye on a corner of the mirror, 'was an inner coffin of wood, an outer casing of lead, then an outer wooden shell. Massive, airtight, good for years against corruption. So also was the coffin of one John Devereux, a cabinet minister under Lord Palmerston, the coffin made in mid- nineteenth century. Each of them: eight hundred pounds.'
The woman's voice went up shrilly.
'You speak of the price?'
'No. I speak of the weight'
'Mais c'est incroyable. No, no, no! You are mocking me!' 'I assure you I am not'
'Such a formidable weight is moved about in this tomb; it would require six men; yet no footprint is in the sand? It is impossible!'
On the contrary. It would not require six men. And this joke is very simple, when you learn the secret of it' The old, aching riddle!
Holden, who knew he could not be seen beyond that down-shining light over the minors, stood rigid and motionless.
'I claim no credit, you comprehend,' Locke went on, 'for knowing this. It has happened before, twice in England, and once perhaps at a place called Oese! in the Baltic. In the library at Cas—at a certain place; forgive me if I do not mention names—there is a book giving all details.
'For myself,' he declared in his smooth finely enunciated French, 'I hear nothing of this at an interview early this morning with a certain Dr. Fe—a certain doctor of philosophy. No! I hear it only when I am entering the train, with a friend of mine, from a certain police inspector. I told him how the trick was done. He shook hands with me, this Crawford, and said it would enable them to arrest somebody.'
Arrest 'somebody'?
Arrest Celia! Holden, feeling that some fragile shield hitherto guarding Celia had been broken to bits, started to back toward the door over the soft thick carpet. Yet Locke's face in the mirror still kept him there, because its expression was so strained and more thoroughly human than he had ever seen it.
'And yet' Locke said, 'this is not what troubles me.'
'Indeed?' his companion murmured coldly. 'Will it please you to see some more of Joyce's masks?'
'You think I am mocking you over this matter of the coffins?'
'Monsieur buys here. It is his privilege, within limits, to say what he likes.' 'Mademoiselle, for God's sake!'
Locke struck the table. His urbane countenance was pitted with wrinkles. His pale eyes, over the high cheekbones, were turned up pleadingly.
'I was not a young man,' he said, 'when I married. I have a daughter, now age nineteen.'
His companion's voice softened immediately. This was something understandable.
'And you are concerned about her?'
'Yes!'
'Without doubt she is a young girl of good character?'
'Good character? What is that? I don't know. As good, I suppose, as that of most, girls who run the streets nowadays.— Give me another of the masks.'
'Come, monsieur!' Mademoiselle Prey's voice was laughing and chiding at once; all asparkle. 'Come, now! You must not speak like that!'
'No?'
'It is cynical. It is not nice.'
