“There are some rotten things being said about us,” said the Chief Commissioner on the morning of T. B.’s departure. He threw a paper across the table, and T. B. picked it up with an enigmatic smile. He read the flaring column in which the intelligence of the police department was called into question, without a word, and handed the paper back to his chief.
“I think we might solve all these mysteries in one swoop,” he said. “I am going down today to inspect the Secret House—that is where one end of the solution lies.”
The Chief Commissioner looked interested.
“It is very curious that you should be talking about that,” he said. “I have had a report this morning from the chief constable of the county on that extraordinary ménage.”
“And what has he to say about it?”
Sir Gordon Billings shrugged his shoulders.
“It is one of those vague reports which chief constables are in the habit of furnishing,” he said, drily. “Apparently the owner is an American, an invalid, and is eccentric. More than this—and this will surprise you—he has been certified by competent medical authorities as being insane.”
“Insane?” T. B. repeated in surprise.
“Insane,” nodded the chief; “and he has all the privileges which the Lunacy Act confers upon a man. That is rather a facer.”
T. B. looked thoughtful.
“I had a dim idea that I might possibly discover in the occupant one who was, at any rate, a close relative to Fallock.”
“You are doomed to disappointment,” smiled the chief; “there is no doubt about that. I have had all the papers up. The man was certified insane by two eminent specialists, and is under the care of a doctor who lives on the premises, and who also acts as secretary to this Mr. Moole. The secret of the Secret House is pretty clear; it is a private lunatic asylum—that, and nothing else.”
T. B. thought for a while.
“At any rate no harm can be done by interviewing this cloistered Mr. Moole, or by inspecting the house,” he said.
He arrived in Great Bradley in the early part of the afternoon, and drove straight away to the Secret House. The flyman put him down at some distance from the big entrance gate, and he made a careful and cautious reconnaissance of the vicinity. The house was a notable one. It made no pretence at architectural beauty, standing back from the road, and in the very centre of a fairly uncultivated patch of ground. All that afternoon he measured and observed the peculiarities of the approach, the lie of the ground, the entrances, and the exits, and had obtained too a cautious and careful observation of the great electrical power house, which stood in a clump of trees about a hundred yards from the house itself.
The next morning he paid a more open visit. This time his fly put him down at the gateway of the house, and he moved slowly up the gravel pathway to the big front entrance door. He glanced at the tip of the power house chimney which showed over the trees, and shook his head in some doubt. He had furtively inspected the enormous plant which the eccentric owner of the Secret House had found it necessary to lay down.
“Big enough to run an electric railway,” was his mental comment. He had seen, too, the one-eyed engineer, a saturnine man with a disfiguring scar down one side of his face, and a trick of showing his teeth on one side of his mouth when he smiled.
T. B. would have pursued his investigations further, but suddenly he had felt something click under his feet, as he stood peering in at the window, and instantly a gong had clanged, and a shutter dropped noiselessly behind the window, cutting off all further view.
T. B. had retired hastily and had cleared the gates just before they swung to, obviously operated by somebody in the power house.
His present visit was less furtive and it was in broad daylight, with two detectives ostentatiously posted at the gates, that he made his call—for he took no unnecessary risks.
He walked up the four broad marble steps to the portico of the house, and wiped his feet upon a curious metal mat as he pressed the bell. The door itself was half hidden by a hanging curtain, such as one may see screening the halls of suburban houses, made up of brightly coloured beads or lengths of bamboo. In this case it was made by suspending thousands of steel beads upon fine wire strings from a rod above the door. It gave the impression that the entrance itself was of steel, but when in answer to his summons the door was opened, the chick looped itself up on either side in the manner of a stage curtain, and it seemed to work automatically on the opening of the door.
There stood in the entrance a tall man, with a broad white face and expressionless eyes. He was dressed soberly in black, and had the restrained and deferential attitude of the superior manservant.
“I am Mr. Smith, of Scotland Yard,” said T. B. briefly, “and I wish to see Mr. Moole.”
The man in black looked dubious.
“Will you come in?” he asked, and T. B. was shown into a large comfortably furnished sitting-room.
“I am afraid you can’t see Mr. Moole,” said the man, as he
