“What was it? Whom did you fire at?” asked Havelock huskily.
“Nerves,” said Dick, without shame.
By the time they reached the house they were wet through, but he declined the invitation to go into the Hall and dry his clothes. He had work to do, and no sooner had the door closed on the girl than he was on his way back to the Selford tombs.
As he approached the wood he proceeded with caution, searching left and right and keeping his eyes on those little clumps of bushes which afforded cover. The wounded man was nowhere in sight.
He had slipped the key of the catacombs into his pocket, and now, having opened the grille, he took a pair of handcuffs from his hip pocket, snapped them at the top and bottom of the lock, so that it was impossible for the door to close. This done, he descended the steps, and, flashing his lamp before him, he came to the door of the seven locks. From an inside pocket of his waistcoat he took out the two keys and tried one of them on the top keyhole, without producing any result. It was not until he had got to the fourth slit that the key slipped in and turned with a click. He pulled gently, but the door did not budge. He tried with the second of the keys, and found that it fitted the last of the locks. Turning them both together, he pulled again, but the door did not move.
The mystery of the door was very clear to Dick Martin. Seven keys had to turn simultaneously before the door would open; and when it opened, what was there to see? He drew back the panel and looked at the stone urn. If the ancient Sir Hugh was buried here, was his body in that casket?
It was impossible to see the side walls in their entirety, but from what view he got it seemed unlikely that there could be any hidden sepulchre. The long shelf cut in the solid rock (which he now saw for the first time) had in all probability held all that was mortal of the first Selford, but no trace remained of him.
Pocketing the keys, he went back, closing and locking the middle door, and ascended the steps into the daylight. Here he had a shock. Not a dozen feet from the mouth of the tomb was one of the long yellow cylinders which he had last seen fifty feet away. The beast-man, then, was somewhere at hand; in all likelihood was watching him at this moment with hateful eyes. In spite of his self-possession, a little shiver ran down Dick Martin’s spine.
There was something obscene about this strange visitant. He lifted the heavy cylinder, walked a few paces and flung it into the bushes, and then followed the path through the trees.
He had an almost overpowering desire to run. He recognized with horror that he was on the verge of panic, and it needed but this discovery to swing him round to face the way he had come. Slowly, and against every natural instinct, he walked back through the forest towards where the cylinder was, to where his enemy was hiding. Coming to the edge of the clearing, he waited a full minute. Having thus tutored his nerves, he continued on his way to the house, never once looking back, but all his nerves taut.
It was with a feeling very much like relief that he reached the open valley and the comforting sight of the ugly home of the Selfords. The cold malignity of this inhuman creature; his persistence, wounded as he was, to destroy the man against whom his enmity had been aroused; the deadly earnestness of him—all these things were impressive. This accidental association with the door of seven keys that hid nothing apparently but dust had brought him into deadly peril—had it also jeopardized Sybil Lansdown? At the thought, something gripped at his heart. It was all so unreal, so unbelievable.
A member of the everyday world who suddenly found himself in a community of pixies and fairies could be no more bewildered than was Richard Martin at the revelations which had followed one on the other during the past three days. Crime he knew, or thought he knew; and criminals were an open book to him. His youth had been spent amongst these evaders and breakers of the law. They had taught him their sinister tricks; he had become proficient in their practices. He knew the way their minds worked, and could—and would, since he was something of a writer—have prepared a passable textbook on criminal psychology.
But now he was out of the world of real crime. Only once before had he had that experience, when it was his duty to investigate a series of terrible accidents which had shocked Toronto to its depths. Here he had met for the first time the amateur criminal and found himself at sea. But for the greatest good luck, the man he sought would have escaped detection. As it was, he virtually betrayed himself. The criminal mind is not a brilliant one; its view is commonplace, its outlook narrow and restricted. The average criminal lives meanly, from hand to mouth, and is without reserves, either of assistance in committing a crime or in covering his retreat.
Crime is an ugly word, he thought, as he paced slowly towards the house. Up to now, beyond the attempts which this unknown assailant of his had made, no charge could lie against any discoverable man. Except Lew Pheeney! Poor Lew, he had belonged to the real world. What agony of mind had he suffered when, in the dark of the night, he had found himself working on that awful door.
He was soaked to the skin, but was not aware of the fact until, with a gasp of dismay, the girl drew attention to his sodden coat just as
