Perspiration stood on Dick Martin’s face, and for a second he had the mind to force his way back into the house and demand an explanation. And then he saw the senselessness of that move, and, carrying a petrol tin in either hand, made his way down the drive. He was wearing rubber-soled shoes that caused little or no noise, and he was glad, for now his ears must serve where his eyes failed. By reason of his burden he had to dispense with the use of his lamp.
He had passed that section of the hedge where he had seen the hole, when his quick ears detected something moving behind him. It was the faintest sound, and only one with his keen sense of hearing could have detected it above the noise of the falling rain. It was not a rustle; it was something impossible to describe. Dick turned round and began to walk backwards, staring into the pitch black darkness before him. The noise grew more distinct. A twig snapped in the bushes to his right, then suddenly he saw his danger and dropped the tins. Before he could reach his gun he was at grips with a something, naked, hairless, bestial.
Huge bare arms were encircling his shoulders; a great hand was groping for his face, and he struck blindly at a bare torso, so muscled that, even as he struck, he realized that he was wasting his strength. Suddenly, with a mighty effort, he jerked round, gripped the huge arm with both his hands, and, stooping, jerked his assailant over his head. There was a thud, a groan, a ghastly sobbing, blubbering sound that was not human, and in the next fraction of a second Dick’s automatic was in his hand and the safety catch pushed down.
“Stay where you are, my friend,” he breathed. “I’d like to have a look at you.”
He picked up the torch he had dropped and turned the light on the ground. Nobody was there. He flashed the lamp left and right without discovering a trace of his assailant. Was he behind him? Turning, he sent the rays in the direction of the house, and in that second caught sight of a great figure, naked except for a loincloth, disappearing into the bushes.
“Jumping snakes!” breathed Dick Martin, and lost not a second in reaching the road, refilled the empty tank and started the engine.
In a little while he was following the road to London, absorbed in the problem of Dr. Stalletti, and the big hole in the ground, recently dug, and intended, he did not doubt, for the reception of his own body.
X
Mr. Cody was not a good walker, and was, moreover, a particularly fearful man, otherwise he might have walked the six miles which separated him from Gallows Cottage on a dark and windy night. Instead, he ordered his car, his chauffeur protesting sourly, and drove to within a hundred yards of the house.
“Back into that lane, put your lights out, and don’t move until I return.”
Mr. Tom Cawler growled something under his breath.
“And don’t you be long!” he said. “What is the game, anyway, Cody? Why didn’t you get him to come over?”
“Mind your own dam’ business!” snapped the little man, and disappeared into the darkness.
He reached the cottage soon after one o’clock, and groped his way up the dark drive. Once, as he put out his stick to feel his way, it almost dropped from under him. If he had been leaning his weight upon it he would have fallen into the pit which had been dug by the side of the path.
He did not knock at the door, but, making a half circuit of the house, tapped at one of the dark windows, and returned to find the front door open and Stalletti waiting in the hall.
“Ah, it is you! So strange to find you at such an hour! Come in, my very dear friend. I received your telephone message, but, alas! fate was against me.”
“He got away?” asked the other fearfully.
Dr. Stalletti shrugged and stroked his long beard.
“It was fate,” he said. “Otherwise, he would be—quite close to us. I spread the lamps on the road, and myself emptied his petrol, and got back to the house before he came. The situation was extraordinary and remarkable. There was nothing between him and death by the thin end of this card.” He held a soiled and greasy playing-card in his hand. He had been playing patience when the knock came. “There was one weak link, and so it snapped.”
Cody looked round the gloomy hall like a man frightened.
“What will happen now?” he asked in a whisper.
Again the doctor shrugged.
“The police will come sooner or later, and they will make a search of my house. Does it matter? What shall they find here but a few rats lawfully dead?”
“Did you—?” Cody did not complete the question.
“I sent somebody after him, but somebody failed like a bungling idiot. You cannot develop muscle except at the expense of brain, my dear fellow. Will you come in?”
He led the way back to his workroom. The desk at which he worked had been cleared of its unpleasant properties, and was half covered with playing-cards.
“First you may tell me who is this man? I have seen him before. He came to me to ask some questions about a book. It was the day your chauffeur was here. I seem to know him, and yet I do not know him.”
Cody licked his dry lips; his heavy face was white and drawn.
“He is the man Havelock sent after Selford,” he muttered, and the doctor’s eyebrows went up to a point.
“Can that possibly be? How extraordinary and bizarre! So he is the gentleman that the clever lawyer sent to look for Selford!”
He began to laugh, and the sound of his laughter was
