The machine turned into Lincoln’s Inn Fields and stopped before the Havelock building. When Mr. Havelock came down to the car, he was smiling broadly, as though there were an element of humour in the adventure.
“How does it feel,” he asked, as the car moved westward, “for a detective to receive a clue from an amateur? Are you very much chagrined at Miss Lansdown’s remarkable theory?”
“I haven’t heard the theory,” said Dick, skilfully dodging between a bus and a taxicab. “I’ve got my thrill coming.”
“I hope you will get it,” said Havelock dryly. “Frankly, I would not have come on this little jaunt but for the fact that my monthly visit to Selford Hall is due, and a lawyer never loses an opportunity of saving unnecessary expenses. You, Mr. Martin, will appear in the expense sheet of the Selford estate as a liability!”
Like other men whose jokes were infrequent, he was amused at the slightest of his own jests.
The car flew through Horsham, bore to the right on to the Pulborough Road, and, nearly two hours after they had left the City, it pulled up before a pair of imposing lodge gates. At the sound of the horn an untidy-looking woman came from the lodge, opened the gates, and dropped a curtsey to Mr. Havelock as the car sped up a well-tended drive.
“We have to keep the place in spick and span order,” explained Mr. Havelock; “and one of my jobs is to engage a staff of servants the moment our globe-trotting young lord decides to settle down in his native land.”
“Are there any servants in the hall itself?” asked Dick.
Havelock shook his head.
“A caretaker and his wife only,” he said. “Once a month we have a contingent of women in from the village to clean up and dust and polish. As a matter of fact, the place is in a very good state of repair, and why he doesn’t let it is beyond my understanding. By the way,” he said suddenly, “I had a letter from him this morning. He is delaying his arrival till December, which probably means that he won’t be home this winter.”
“Where is he now?” asked Dick, looking over his shoulder.
Mr. Havelock smiled.
“I shouldn’t like to be very explicit on the subject. He was at Cairo when the Egyptian mail left. He’s probably now in Damascus or Jerusalem. I don’t mind confessing that I often wish him in Jericho!”
At that moment the Hall came into view; a Tudor house of severe and unpleasing lines. To Dick’s untutored eye it had the appearance of a large brick barn, to which twisted chimneys and gables had been added. The car drew up at the broad gravelled space before the porch.
“We’d better get down here. We have a mile walk across the rough,” said Havelock.
At the sound of the car wheels the caretaker, a middle-aged man, had appeared, and with him the lawyer exchanged a few words about the estate. It seemed that the caretaker was also acting as bailiff, for he reported a fence that needed repairing, and an oak that had been uprooted in a recent storm.
“Now, then,” said Havelock. He had brought a walking-stick with him, and led the way across the broad lawn which, Dick noted, had recently been cut, through an orchard into a farmyard, which was untenanted save for half a dozen chickens and a dog, and through another gate into the park. Though there was no road, there was a definite pathway which led across the broad acres, skirting and half-encircling the steep bluff under which the house was built, through a spinney, and at last into a shallow valley, on the opposite side of which stood a long, dark line of trees.
As they climbed the gentle slope that led to the wood, Dick was struck by the lifelessness of the dark copse, which he would have recognized from Mrs. Lansdown’s description. The trees, with their green, dank-looking boles, seemed dead in spite of their new greenness. Not a leaf stirred upon that airless day; and to add to the gloom, a big thundercloud was rising rapidly beyond the bluff, showing defined edges of livid grey against the blue sky.
“It is going to rain, I’m afraid,” said Mr. Havelock, glancing up. “We are nearly there.”
The path became visible again; it led a serpentine course through the trees, mounting all the time. And then, unexpectedly, they came into a clearing, in the middle of which was a great dome-shaped rock.
“This is called the Selford Stone,” explained Mr. Havelock, pointing with his stick; “and that is the entrance to the tombs.”
Cut in the face of the rock was an oblong opening, covered by a steel grille, red with rust, but, as Dick saw, of enormous strength. Mr. Havelock put down the lanterns he had been carrying, and lit them one by one before he took from his pocket a big, ancient-looking key, and inserted it in the rusty lock. With a turn of his wrist the ward snapped back and the door of the iron grille opened squeakily.
“Let me go first.”
The lawyer stooped and went down a flight of moss-covered steps. The girl followed, Slick bringing up the rear. There were twelve of these steps, the detective counted, and by the light of a lantern he saw a small vaulted room, at the end of which was another steel grille of lighter make. The same key apparently fitted both.
Beyond the second door the solid rock had been hollowed out into twenty tiny chapels. They looked for all the world like refectory cells, with their heavy oaken doors and huge hinges, and on each had been carved a string of names, some of which, as Dick found when
