“Have you a telephone?”
There was one, and she had taken a message which would be given to her husband when he arrived home in the early hours of the morning.
Dick restarted the car, and in a few minutes—
“Here we are,” he said, and pulled up his car with a jerk before the gates of Weald House.
He sounded his horn, but there was no sign of light or movement in the little lodge, which, he afterwards learned, was untenanted. Getting down, he tried the gates, and found one was fastened by a slip catch. Throwing it open, he unbolted the second and, fastening both gates back, remounted his machine and went cautiously up the drive.
The bulk of the house was visible for fifty yards before they came to it. No light showed, and there was no evidence of human activity. He rang the bell and waited, listening. Again he pressed the electric push, and supplemented this by banging on the heavy panel of the door. Three minutes were lost in this way, and then Sneed sent one of his friends to throw gravel at one of the upper windows.
“There seems to be nobody up. I’ll give them another few minutes,” said Sneed, “and then we’ll force a window.”
These, he discovered on inspection, were heavily shuttered, but flanking the porch were two narrow panes of ground glass.
“You’ll never get through there,” said Sneed, perhaps conscious of his own bulk.
“Won’t I?” said Dick grimly.
He went back to the car and returned with a screwdriver. Whilst the stout man watched admiringly, he removed the whole pane and drew it out. His one fear was that behind the glass was a shutter or bar, but apparently the narrowness of the window was regarded by Mr. Cody as a sufficient protection.
Assisted by the two detectives, he slipped sideways and feet foremost through an opening, which, it seemed, no human being could pass. His head was the most difficult part of his anatomy to squeeze through, but presently he was in the hall with no damage to himself save a slight laceration to one of his ears.
The hall was in complete darkness. There came no sound but the slow, solemn ticking of a clock on a landing above. Then suddenly he sniffed. Dick Martin had an abnormal sense of smell, and now he scented something which turned him cold. Flashing his lamp on the door, he took off the chain, pulled back the bolts and admitted his companions.
“There’s murder here,” he said tersely. “Can you smell blood?”
“Blood?” said the startled Sneed. “Good God, no! Can you?”
Martin nodded. He was searching the walls for the electric light switch, and after a while he found a board with five, and these he turned over. One lamp lit in the hall and one on the landing above, out of sight. Outside switches controlled the lights of this room. He pointed to the door. Suddenly he felt Sneed’s hand grip his arm.
“Look!” muttered the inspector.
He was glaring upstairs, and, following his eyes, Dick saw something which at first he did not understand. And then slowly he realized that he was looking at the shadow of a figure cast against the wall of the landing. It was obviously leaning over the unseen banisters, for the carved uprights and the broad rail showed clearly against the papered wall. The light he had lit on the landing above was evidently placed low, and behind the motionless figure, and thus it was that the shadow was clear and without distortion.
Slipping an automatic from his pocket, he ran up the stairs sideways, looking back over his shoulder, and Sneed saw him halt on the landing, look for a moment, and then:
“Come up, Sneed.”
The inspector followed, reached the first landing, and turned to look into a white face that was staring down at him with unseeing eyes—the face of a stout woman who was half leaning, half lying, across the banisters, both her hands clenched, and on her face a look of unimaginable horror.
XXI
“Dead,” said Sneed, unnecessarily, as they went slowly up the five stairs that brought them to the top landing.
There was no sign of violence, and they now saw what kept the body erect. She had been kneeling on a low settee which ran flush with the banisters, and by the accident of balance, when death had come, had retained her position. Reverently they lowered the body to the ground, whilst the inspector conducted a brief examination.
“Fright,” he said briefly. “I saw a man like this about ten years ago. She saw something—horrible!”
“Has she got anything in her hand?” asked Dick suddenly, and prised open the tightly clenched fingers.
As he did so something fell to the parquet floor with a clang, and he uttered an exclamation of amazement.
It was a key—the fellow to that which reposed at his bankers.
The two men looked at one another without a word. Then:
“Where is Cody?” asked Sneed.
He was searching the wall for the telephone wiring, which he had expected to see, and, guessing his thoughts, Dick Martin pointed downstairs.
“You’re looking for the phone? It is in the library; I saw it when I was here the other night. Moses! Look at that!”
The stairs were carpeted with dark grey carpet, thick and luxurious to the tread, and he was gaping at something he had not seen when he came up the stairs with the light in his face—the red print of a bare foot! Stooping, he touched it with his finger.
“Blood,” he said. “I thought I smelt it! I wonder where those feet picked up that stuff?”
They found the imprint again lower down. In fact, on every second step the stain lay, and the nearer they got to the bottom of the stairs the more sharply defined it was.
“He came up two steps at a time—three here,” nodded Dick. “We’ll probably find the trail in the hall.”
The vestibule was floored with polished wood,
