“No, she’s not here,” said Michael quietly. “Thank you very much; I won’t keep you. Will you wait for me at the police station?”
He went upstairs and put on his coat.
“Where do you think she is?” asked Jack.
“She is at Griff Towers,” replied the other, “and whether Gregory Penne lives or dies this night depends entirely upon the treatment that Adele has received at his hands.”
At the police station he found the landlady, a little frightened, more than a little tearful.
“What was Miss Leamington wearing when she went out?”
“Her blue cloak, sir,” whimpered the woman, “that pretty blue cloak she always wore.”
Scotland Yard men were at the station, and it was a heavily loaded car that ran out to Chichester—too heavy for Michael, in a fever of impatience, for the weight of its human cargo checked its speed, and every second was precious. At last, after an eternity of time, the big car swung into the drive. Michael did not stop to waken the lodge-keeper, but smashed the frail gates open with the buffers of his machine, mounted the slope, crossing the gravel parade, and halted.
There was no need to ring the bell: the door was wide open, and, at the head of his party, Mike Brixan dashed through the deserted hall, along the corridor into Gregory’s library. One light burnt, offering a feeble illumination, but the room was empty. With rapid strides he crossed to the desk and turned the switch. Bhag’s den opened, but Bhag too was an absentee.
He pressed the bell by the side of the fireplace, and almost immediately the brown-faced servitor whom he had seen before came trembling into the room.
“Where is your master?” asked Michael in Dutch.
The man shook his head.
“I don’t know,” he replied, but instinctively he looked up to the ceiling.
“Show me the way.”
They went back to the hall, up the broad stairway on to the first floor. Along a corridor, hung with swords, as was its fellow below, he reached another open door—the great dance hall where Gregory Penne had held revel that evening. There was nobody in sight, and Michael came out into the hall. As he did so, he was aware of a frantic tapping at one of the doors in the corridor. The key was in the lock: he turned it and flung the door wide open, and Stella Mendoza, white as death, staggered out.
“Where is Adele?” she gasped.
“I want to ask you that,” said Michael sternly. “Where is she?”
The girl shook her head helplessly, strove to speak, and then collapsed in a swoon.
He did not wait for her to recover, but continued his search. From room to room he went, but there was no sign of Adele or the brutal owner of Griff Towers. He searched the library again, and passed through into the little drawing-room, where a table was laid for two. The cloth was wet with spilt wine; one glass was half empty—but the two for whom the table was laid had vanished. They must have gone out of the front door—whither?
He was standing tense, his mind concentrated upon a problem that was more vital to him than life itself, when he heard a sound that came from the direction of Bhag’s den. And then there appeared in the doorway the monstrous ape himself. He was bleeding from a wound in the shoulder; the blood fell drip-drip-drip as he stood, clutching in his two great hands something that seemed like a bundle of rags. As Michael looked, the room rocked before his eyes.
The tattered, stained garment that Bhag held was the cloak that Adele Leamington had worn!
For a second Bhag glared at the man who he knew was his enemy, and then, dropping the cloak, he shrank back toward his quarters, his teeth bared.
Three times Michael’s automatic spat, and the great, manlike thing disappeared in a flash—and the door closed with a click.
Knebworth had been a witness of the scene. It was he who ran forward and picked up the cloak that the ape had dropped.
“Yes, that was hers,” he said huskily, and a horrible thought chilled him.
Michael had opened the door of the den, and, pistol in hand, dashed through the opening. Knebworth dared not follow. He stood petrified, waiting, and then Michael reappeared.
“There’s nothing here,” he said.
“Nothing?” asked Jack Knebworth in a whisper. “Thank God!”
“Bhag has gone—I think I may have hit him; there is a trail of blood, but I may not be responsible for that. He had been shot recently,” he pointed to stains on the floor. “He wasn’t shot when I saw him last.”
“Have you seen him before tonight?”
Michael nodded.
“For three nights he has been haunting Longvale’s house.”
“Longvale’s!”
Where was Adele? That was the one dominant question, the one thought uppermost in Michael Brixan’s mind. And where was the baronet? What was the meaning of that open door? None of the servants could tell him, and for some reason he saw that they were speaking the truth. Only Penne and the girl—and this great ape—knew, unless—
He hurried back to where he had left a detective trying to revive the unconscious Stella Mendoza.
“She has passed from one fainting fit to another,” said the officer. “I can get nothing out of her except that once she said ‘Kill him, Adele.’ ”
“Then she has seen her!” said Michael.
One of the officers he had left outside to watch the building had a report to make. He had seen a dark figure climbing the wall and disappear apparently through the solid brickwork. A few minutes later it had come out again.
“That was Bhag,” said Michael. “I knew he was not here when we arrived. He must have come in through the opening while we were upstairs.”
The car that had carried Adele had been found. It was Stella’s, and at first Michael suspected that the girl was a party to the abduction. He learnt afterwards that, whilst the woman’s chauffeur had been in the kitchen, virtually
