It was the sound of a muffled thud, as if a heavy door had been closed. It seemed to come from somewhere in the room. Reeder took the crowbar from the detective’s hand and attacked the panel behind the settee. Beneath was solid wall. He ripped down another strip, with no more enlightening result. Again he opened the divan. Its bottom was made of a thin layer of oak. This, too, was ripped off; beneath this again was the stone floor.
“Strip it,” said Reeder, and when this was done he stepped inside the divan and seesawed gingerly from one end to the other.
“There’s nothing here,” he said. “Go downstairs and phone Mr. Simpson. Tell him what has happened.”
When the man had gone, he resumed his examination of the body. Daver had carried, attached to one of the buttons of his trousers, a long gold chain. This was gone; he found it broken off close to the link, and the button itself hanging by a thread. It was while he was making his examination that his hand touched a bulky package in the dead man’s hip pocket. It was a worn leather case, filled with scraps of memoranda, mostly indecipherable. They were written in a formless hand, generally with pencil, and the writing was large and irregular, while the paper used for these messages was of every variety. One was a scrawled chemical formula; another was a brief note which ran:
“House opposite Reeder to let. Engage or get key. Communicate usual place.”
Some of these notes were understandable, some beyond Mr. Reeder’s comprehension. But he came at last to a scrap which swept the colour from his cheeks. It was written in the same hand on the margin of a newspaper and was crumpled into a ball:
“Belman fell over cliff six miles west Larme. Send men to get body before police discover.”
Mr. J. G. Reeder read and the room spun round.
XVI
When Margaret Belman recovered consciousness, she was in the open air, lying in a little recess, effectively hidden from the mouth of the cave. A man in a torn shirt and ragged trousers was standing by her side, looking down at her. As she opened her eyes she saw him put his finger to his mouth, as though to signal silence. His hair was unkempt; streaks of dried blood zigzagged down his face, and the hair above, she saw, was matted. Yet there was a certain kindliness in his disfigured face which reassured her, as he knelt down and, making a funnel of his hands, whispered:
“Be quiet! I’m sorry to have frightened you, but I was scared you’d shout if you saw me. I suppose I look pretty awful.”
His grin was very reassuring.
“Who are you?” she answered in the same tone.
“My name’s Brill, C.I.D.”
“How did you get here?” she asked.
“I’d like to be able to tell you,” he answered grimly. “You’re Miss Belman, aren’t you?”
She nodded. He lifted his head, listening, and, flattening himself against the rock, craned out slowly and peeped round the edge of his hiding place. He did not move for about five minutes, and by this time she had risen to her feet. Her knees were dreadfully shaky; she felt physically sick; her mouth was dry and parched.
Apparently satisfied, he crept back to her side.
“I was left on duty in Reeder’s room. I thought I heard him calling from the window—you can’t distinguish voices when they whisper—asking me to come out quick as he wanted me. I’d hardly dropped to the ground before—gosh!” He touched his head gingerly and winced. “That’s all I remember till I woke up and found myself drowning. I’ve been in the cave all the morning—naturally.”
“Why naturally?” she whispered.
“Because the beach is covered with water at high tide and the cave’s the only place. It is a little too densely populated for me just now.”
She stared at him in amazement.
“Populated? What do you mean?”
“Whisper!” he warned her, for she had raised her voice.
Again he listened.
“I’d like to know how they get down—Daver and that old devil.”
She felt herself going white.
“You mean—Flack?”
He nodded.
“Flack’s only been here about an hour, and how he got down, God knows. I suppose our fellows are patrolling the house?”
“The police?” she asked in astonishment.
“Flack’s headquarters—didn’t you know it? I suppose you wouldn’t. I thought Reeder—I mean Mr. Reeder—told you everything.”
He was rather a talkative young man, more than a little exuberant at finding himself alive, and with good reason.
“I’ve been dodging in and out the cave all the morning. They’ve got a sentry on duty up there”—he nodded toward Siltbury. “It’s a marvellous organization. They held up a gold convoy this morning and got away with it—I heard the old man telling his daughter. The strange thing is that, though he wasn’t there to superintend the steal, his plan worked out like clockwork. It’s a curious thing, any crook will work for old Flack. He’s employed the cleverest people in the business, and Ravini is the only man that ever sold him.”
“Do you know what has happened to Mr. Ravini?” she asked, and he shook his head.
“He’s dead, I expect. There are a lot of things in the cave that I haven’t seen, and some that I have. They’ve got a petrol boat inside as big as a church—the boat I mean—Hush!”
Again he shrank against the cliff. Voices were coming nearer and nearer. Perhaps it was the peculiar acoustics of the cave which gave him the illusion that the speakers were standing almost at their elbow. Brill recognized the thin, harsh voice of the old man and grinned again, but it was not a pleasant smile to see.
“There’s something wrong, something damnably wrong. What is it, Olga?”
“Nothing, Father.”
Margaret recognized the voice of Olga Crewe.
“You have been very good and very patient, my love, and
