Dick started violently. He had almost forgotten the horror in his anxiety for the girl. Eventually it was agreed that Havelock should go up to town in his car and bring Mrs. Lansdown down with him.
The news of her daughter’s safety had already been conveyed to her, and after the lawyer had left Dick went to the village and telephoned to her. She was eager to come at once, but he asked her to wait for Havelock’s arrival.
XXVII
There was much for Sneed to do before he could find the rest he so greatly needed. After a hasty breakfast he met the police chief of Sussex, and together they motored over to Gallows Hill, carrying a warrant for the arrest of the scientist. But the bird had flown, and the house was in charge of an odd man who had been employed to do jobs about the grounds. He had, he said, no knowledge whatever of the doctor or of any other inmate of the house. The man lived in a little cottage about a quarter of a mile away from the doctor’s house, and his story was that he had been awakened early in the morning by Stalletti, who had given him a key and told him to go to Gallows Cottage and stay there until he returned.
A search of the house revealed no fresh information. The doctor’s bed had not been slept in, and the two beds in the little room were also untenanted.
“It would be a very difficult charge to prove, anyway,” said the Sussex officer as they left the house. “Unless you found the pellets in his possession, you could hardly charge him with administering dangerous drugs. And even then you’d have to prove they were dangerous. They may have been a sedative. You say that the young lady met this man in peculiar circumstances, and while she was in a very nervous state?”
“She met him, to be exact,” said Sneed sarcastically, “in a tomb in the bowels of the earth at two o’clock in the morning, which, I submit, are circumstances which incline a young lady to feel a trifle on the nervous side?”
“In the Selford tomb? You didn’t tell me that,” said the Sussex man resentfully. For there is, between Scotland Yard and the provincial police, a certain amount of friction, which it would be ungenerous to ascribe to jealousy and untruthful to explain as well-founded.
Until midday Sneed was at the Weald House, in consultation with the officer who had been called in from Scotland Yard to take charge of the case.
“No, there are no marks on the woman. She died from fright—at least, that is the doctor’s opinion,” said the Yard man. “The other fellow was beaten to death. I’ve searched the orchard, it is simply littered with spent shells from an automatic pistol. How do you account for that?”
Sneed told him of the fusillade which had met them when they attempted to pursue the unknown trespasser.
“We found eighteen empty cartridge cases; there are probably another one or two knocking about which we haven’t picked up yet,” said the Scotland Yard man. “Can you account for the ladder which we found against the house?”
Sneed explained that phenomenon in a few words.
“Humph!” said the Yard man. “It is queer about Cody. He’s on the register.”
“Don’t use those American expressions,” said Sneed testily, and the Yard man grinned, for he had spent two years in New York and had added to the vocabulary of police headquarters.
“Anyway, he’s in the Records Office. He was convicted twenty-five years ago of obtaining money by false pretences in the name of Bertram; he was one of the first individuals in England to run a correspondence school, and he caught some unfortunate person for a thousand pounds on the pretence that he could teach him the art of hypnotism. He and a fellow Stalletti were in it, but Stalletti got away—”
“Stalletti?” Sneed looked at him open-mouthed. “That Italian doctor?”
“He’s the fellow,” nodded Inspector Wilson. “If you remember, our people caught Stalletti for vivisecting without a licence, but that was a few years later. He is a clever devil, Stalletti.”
“ ‘Clever’ is not the word,” said Sneed grimly. “But it is news to me that they were acquainted.”
“Acquainted! Stalletti came here twice a week. I’ve been talking to some of the servants, who were given a holiday last night and told not to come back until ten o’clock this morning. There was something dirty going on here and Cody wanted them out of the way.”
Sneed took his hand and shook it solemnly.
“You’ve got the making of a detective in you,” he said. “I discovered that before I went into the house last night!”
As he was going:
“By the way, Martin has been here. He came to retrieve his car. He’s driven it flat into Horsham to get new tyres and he wanted me to ask you to wait for him.”
Sneed strolled down to the lodge gates and had not long to wait when Dick’s machine came flying along the road.
“Jump in; I’m going to Selford,” said Martin. “Mrs. Lansdown arrived half an hour ago. Did you find Stalletti?”
“No. That bird is doing a little quick flying—and he’s wise!”
“I didn’t expect he would wait for you.”
“Did you know he was a friend of Cody’s?” asked Sneed.
He was a little annoyed when his information failed to produce the sensation he had anticipated. Dick Martin knew this and more.
“Oh, yes. Old and tried friends—but not by the same jury. I’d give a lot of money to have Stalletti’s key!”
“His what?”
“His key,” repeated Dick, dodging round a farmer’s cart and narrowly escaping destruction from a speedster coming from the other direction. “He has the fifth key; Lord Selford has probably the sixth; and X, the great unknown, has the seventh. I’m not quite sure about Lord
