“You’ll have to walk warily here,” he said.
Progress was slow, for they did not know that a definite path existed between the jagged ends of broken iron and debris. Once or twice Leon stopped to stamp on the floor; it gave back a hollow sound.
The search was long and painfully slow: a quarter of an hour passed before Leon’s lamp focused the upturned flagstone and the yawning entrance of the vault. He was the first to descend, and, as he reached the floor, he saw, silhouetted in the light that flowed from the inner room, a man, as he thought, crouching in the doorway, and covered him.
“Put up your hands!” he said.
The figure made no response, and Manfred ran to the shape. The face was in the shadow, but he brought his own lamp down and recognized the set grin of the dead man.
Gurther!
So thus he had died, in a last effort to climb out for help.
“The Snake,” said Manfred briefly. “There are no marks on his face, so far as I can see.”
“Do you notice his wrist, George?”
Then, looking past the figure, Gonsalez saw the girl lying on the bed, and recognized Joan before he saw her face. Halfway across the room he slipped on something. Instinctively he knew it was a snake and leapt around, his pistol balanced.
“Merciful heaven! Look at this!”
He stared from the one reptile to the other.
“Dead!” he said. “That explains Gurther.”
Quickly he unstrapped Joan’s wrists and lifted up her head, listening, his ear pressed to the faintly fluttering heart. The basin and the sponge told its own story. Where was Mirabelle?
There was another room, and a row of big cupboards, but the girl was in no place that he searched.
“She’s gone, of course,” said Manfred quietly. “Otherwise, the trap would not have been open. We’d better get this poor girl out of the way and search the grounds. Digby, go to—”
He stopped. If Oberzohn were in the house, they must not take the risk of alarming him.
But the girl’s needs were urgent. Manfred picked her up and carried her out into the open, and, with Leon guiding them, they came, after a trek which almost ended in a broken neck for Leon, to within a few yards of the house.
“I presume,” said Gonsalez, “that the hole into which I nearly dived was dug for a purpose, and I shouldn’t be surprised to learn it was intended that the late Mr. Gurther should find a permanent home there. Shall I take her?”
“No, no,” said Manfred, “go on into the lane. Poiccart should be there with the car by now.”
“Poiccart knows more about growing onions than driving motorcars.” The gibe was mechanical; the man’s heart and mind were on Mirabelle Leicester.
They had to make a circuit of the stiff copper-wire fence which surrounded the house, and eventually reached Hangman’s Lane just as the headlamps of the Spanz came into view.
“I will take her to the hospital and get in touch with the police,” said Manfred. “I suppose there isn’t a nearby telephone?”
“I shall probably telephone from the house,” said Leon gravely.
From where he stood he could not tell whether the door was open or closed. There was no transom above the door, so that it was impossible to tell whether there were lights in the passage or not. The house was in complete darkness.
He was so depressed that he did not even give instructions to Poiccart, who was frankly embarrassed by the duty which had been imposed upon him, and gladly surrendered the wheel to George.
They lifted the girl into the tonneau, and, backing into the gate, went cautiously up the lane—Leon did not wait to see their departure, but returned to the front of the house.
The place was in darkness. He opened the wire gate and went silently up the steps. He had not reached the top before he saw that the door was wide open. Was it a trap? His lamp showed him the switch: he turned on the light and closed the door behind him, and, bending his head, listened.
The first door on the right was Oberzohn’s room. The door was ajar, but the lamps were burning inside. He pushed it open with the toe of his boot, but the room was empty.
The next two doors he tried on that floor were locked. He went carefully down to the kitchens and searched them both. They were tenantless. He knew there was a servant or two on the premises, but one thing he did not know, and this he discovered in the course of his tour, was that Oberzohn had no bedroom. One of the two rooms above had evidently been occupied by the servants. The door was open, the room was empty and in some confusion; a coarse nightdress had been hastily discarded and left on the tumbled bedclothes. Oberzohn had sent his servants away in a hurry—why?
There was a half-smoked cigarette on the edge of a deal washstand. The ash lay on the floor. In a bureau every drawer was open and empty, except one, a half-drawer filled with odd scraps of cloth. Probably the cook or the maid smoked. He found a packet of cigarettes under one pillow to confirm this view, and guessed they had gone to bed leisurely with no idea that they would be turned into the night.
He learned later that Oberzohn had bundled off his servants at ten minutes’ notice, paying them six months’ salary as some salve for the indignity.
Pfeiffer’s room was locked; but now, satisfied that the house was empty, he broke the flimsy catch, made a search but found nothing. Gurther’s apartment was in indescribable disorder. He had evidently changed in a hurry. His powder puffs and beards, crepe hair and spirit bottles, littered the dressing-table. He remembered, with a pang of contrition, that he had promised to telephone the police, but when he tried to get the exchange he found the line was dead: a strange circumstance,
