Tab watched the bright pin as it was pulled across the floor and through the ventilator.
That was the secret of the pin!
The last time the thread must have slipped or possibly the point of the pin had caught in the woodwork of the door and had fallen where he had found it. Or the man may have left it in the vault and it had been left in the passage after Trasmere’s death to add mystery to mystery.
“Did you see?” Lander’s voice shook with pride. “Simple, eh? And quick, Tab?”
Tab did not answer.
“I am a rotten architect, eh, Tab, but by Jingo, I’m a good bricklayer! Have you seen me lay bricks, Tab? I know so much about it that I fired the two workmen today, and said I was going to get somebody else to finish the job, Tab, I’m finishing it.”
Tab crossed his hands and tried to snap the connecting links of the cuff, but he could not get purchase. He had been so tied that he could hardly move. His head was aching terribly and he knew the cause; one of the first things he had seen on recovering consciousness, was the sandbag which Rex Lander had used as he was leaning across the table, fooled into believing that some secret passage would be revealed when he pulled.
Rex was singing softly and mingled with his voice came the click and ring of trowel on brick, that scraping sound that bricklayers make, that tap, tap, tap of the trowel as it knocked the bricks into place.
“I shall probably be working all night,” Lander interrupted his singing to say, talking with his mouth against the ventilator. “I ought to have put the light out, but it is too late now.”
“You poor lout,” said Tab contemptuously. “You poor cheap lunatic! I can’t be angry with you, you unspeakable fat man!”
He heard the quick intake of the other’s breath and knew that he had touched him on the raw.
“Don’t you realise,” said Tab remorselessly, “that the very first place Carver will look will be this vault and when he finds it is bricked up, the very first thing he will do, will be to tear it down and all your fine explanations will not stop him. And then what will he find? The confession, which, in your crazy vanity, you have made, and my statement.”
“You’ll be dead,” howled Lander and went to work frantically.
XXXIII
Tab’s brain was clearing now; he was taking a cold survey of the position. Rex Lander was mad—up to a point. Mad as men of abnormal vanity are mad. Vanity inspired the bravado which made him leave in the deathroom a statement which would surely hang him when it was found. Vanity and hurt pride led him to his present dreadful act, even as it had led him to search amongst Tab’s papers at the flat for Ursula’s nonexistent love letters and to tear and mutilate the portrait of the man who had won her love.
Rex was the burglar. Who else could have found his way unerringly in the dark? And Carver had known!
Madness in relation to crime fascinated Tab. In his younger and more confident days, he had written a monograph on the subject which, amidst much profitless speculation had contained one gem of reasoning—the demand for corroborative evidence of criminal insanity. “Not evidence of a number of acts showing that an accused person is insanely cruel or pursues someone, apparently mad, course; but proof that in other relations he is abnormal. It is corroboration of homicidal tendencies, that a man insists on wearing odd boots of a different colour, or that he is in the habit of walking in the street without his trousers.”
By this standard Rex was sane.
So thought Tab with one half of his brain; the other half was taking stock of his immediate hope of escape. He was handcuffed behind; around his legs was a strap that was beyond the reach of his teeth. Between the links of the handcuffs and the strap a cord had been fastened and pulled tight so that his knees were doubled up without hope of straightening, unless he could succeed in breaking the cord. If that were possible, there was the key within reach. He made an effort, pulling up his legs still further and then jerking out his feet violently. The pain of it nearly made him faint, tough as he was. It seemed as if both his shoulders were dislocated. He could feel the cord; it was stout—perhaps with finger and nail he could pick it into shreds, fibre by fibre, or cut it with his thumb nail.
After the wall was up his time would be very short unless the vault contained some other ventilator which neither Carver nor he had discovered. And yet even if the cord was broken he must wait until Lander had completed his work. It would be fatal, handcuffed as he was, to break out whilst Rex was on hand. His only chance was to free himself of the trussing cord whilst the work outside was in progress, get the key and by some contortion, unlock the door and employ his great strength
