Mr. Havelock, an overcoat over his pyjamas, was running up and down frenziedly.
“Save the women!” he raved. “Can’t you force those bars and get them out?”
Captain Sneed stood apathetically by. He was more than apathetic, he was callous. He was smoking his big pipe with a solemn indifference.
“The women, I tell you!” screamed Havelock, waving his hands to the barred windows of the state room, from which the flames were now roaring.
Dick’s hand fell on his arm.
“You needn’t worry, Mr. Havelock,” he said quietly. “Neither Mrs. Lansdown nor her daughter is in the house.”
The lawyer stared round at him.
“Not in the house?” he gasped.
“I sent them to London much earlier in the evening—in fact, when we were searching the valley a few hours ago,” said Dick, and nodded to his companion.
Mr. Sneed took his pipe from his mouth, knocked out the ashes, and became instantly a competent police official.
“Your name is Arthur Elwood Havelock, and I am Chief Inspector John Sneed of Scotland Yard. I shall take you into custody on a charge of murder and incitement to murder, and I caution you that what you now say may be taken down and used in evidence against you at your trial.”
Havelock opened his mouth to speak, but only a hoarse groan escaped him. And then, as another detective caught him by the arm, he collapsed in an unconscious heap on the ground.
They carried him down to the porter’s lodge, and began their search. About his neck was a thin steel chain, and to this were attached what Dick expected to see—two keys of peculiar design. Under the stimulus of a glass of brandy, Mr. Havelock had recovered, and he was a very indignant man.
“This is the most monstrous charge that has ever been concocted,” he said violently. “For the life of me, I can’t understand what you mean by such a disgraceful—”
“Spare us your eloquence, Mr. Havelock,” said Dick coldly. “It will save you a lot of trouble when I tell you that I have known, from the day I saw a certain photograph in Cape Town, that my chase of Lord Selford was a fake organized by you to allay suspicion. Probably somebody else had been inquiring as to the whereabouts of Selford, and you thought it would be an excellent proof of your bona fides if you sent a fully fledged detective to hunt him down. And, having arrived at this decision, you, with the connivance of Cody, sent his chauffeur, Tom Cawler, to act as hare to my hounds. I happen to know that Cawler was your messenger, because he incautiously showed himself on the balcony of a Cape Town hotel and was snapped by a press photographer. I recognized him at once, and from that moment I have been privately engaged in discovering the mystery of Lord Selford’s fate.”
The lawyer swallowed hard, and then, in a quivering voice:
“I’ll admit that I have acted very foolishly in regard to Selford. He was of a weak intellect, and I placed him in the care of a doctor—”
“You gave him to Stalletti for his damnable experiments!” said Dick sternly. “And in order to test whether Stalletti’s method would be successful, you handed over another child—the nephew of Mrs. Cody, and brother of Tom Cawler. I have just come from the man. He recognized his brother that night he defended Sybil Lansdown, and, calling him by an old pet name they used as children, awakened in the poor soul a memory of the past. For that crime alone, Havelock, you shall go to the scaffold! Not for the murder of Cody, which you superintended; not for firing Selford Manor—you sent those three barrels of naphthaline which I found—but for the killing of two human souls!”
The white-faced man licked his lips.
“You will have to prove—” he began.
And then, unconsciously, his hand strayed to his neck. When he found the chain had gone, beads of perspiration rolled down his pallid face. He made two attempts to say something, and again dropped into the arms of the attendant detectives.
XXXI
“Seven keys,” said Dick, as, in the early light of the morning, they walked towards the tombs. “Cody had one; Silva, the gardener, had one; Mrs. Cody had another; Havelock, being the chief conspirator, had two. By the way, have they got Stalletti out of the lake? He has the sixth, and if I am not mistaken you will find the seventh hanging round the neck of Cawler’s brother.”
They had to wait an hour in the wood until the rescue party had done their work. The sun was rising as they put two dripping wet keys into Dick’s hand.
“And these make seven,” he said.
Down to the tomb they went. The door of one of the little chapels was wide open, and Dick stopped to flash his lamp inside. He threw a light on a square hole in one corner of the grim apartment.
“There is a subterranean passage that leads under the hill and terminates beneath the fireplace of what used to be, in poor little Selford’s days, the playroom of the Manor. It is probably the only part of the house that the poor fellow remembered. The three men have been hiding here since the night Stalletti made his last attempt on the tomb. He had Selford with him, but, in the haste of his escape, he left his victim behind.
“Why did Selford visit the room?” asked Sneed in surprise.
“The poor creature wanted his toys—that is all. These two half mad creatures were mentally children. They had only children’s amusements and children’s fears—that was the hold Stalletti had on them.”
The two men stood in silence before the grim door of the big tomb, while Dick fitted and turned key after key. The seventh lock snicked back, and as he pulled the heavy door swung slowly open.
He was the first into the chamber, and made for the stone
