“Yes,” said Gordon, listening. “Besides, if you come to think of it, this house is pre-Reformation. There was no reason why they should want a secret passage in it when it was built. But when the bad times started, and they wanted a refuge for the priests, the man who came to build the hiding-place wouldn’t play any tricks with a great solid outside wall. He would surely run up a false partition between two rooms.”
“Admirable,” said Carmichael. “It looks as if we should have to trespass on Reeves’ neighbours. Reeves, who lives in the rooms next yours?”
“The one on the left,” sang Reeves, “is Colonel Steele;
I fancy you both must know him,
And Mr. Murdoch’s on the right,
He plays the cello, blow him!
Both of them work in London Town,
So they’re both of them out this morning;
Of that there is no matter of doubt,
No possible, probable shadow of doubt,
No manner of doubt whatever.”
“Good,” said Gordon. “I’ll step the rooms, shall I, while you step the passage? We hardly need the tape-measure yet.”
“Better do both, if you won’t mind; then the pace will be the same.” And Carmichael busied himself in wandering round the room looking for cracks till Gordon reappeared. “Well,” he said, “what news?”
“The fireplace wall, I fancy,” said Gordon. “From the door of Colonel Steele’s room to the door of this, walking down the passage, it takes twelve strides. Inside his room, I only take five strides to the wall. Inside this room, I take a bit over five strides to the same wall. Therefore there must be a thickness of about a pace and a half between Colonel Steele’s room and Reeves’. Now one comes to think of it, he wouldn’t hear Murdock’s cello if there was that thickness the other side.”
“A pace and a half? The priests must have been on the thin side. Yes, that would be it: there must be a length of about ten feet from the fireplace to the wall on the side of the fireplace opposite to the window. Somewhere in that ten feet we’ve got to find the spring.”
“Good heavens!” said Gordon suddenly, “suppose there’s a sliding panel.”
“A man couldn’t get through one of these panels—not even you, Gordon, in your well-known human-cobra act,” said Reeves, who had stopped singing for the moment.
“No, but a man might put his arm through it, and take the photograph away, and put another in its place, while the people in the room were closely occupied—arranging their hands at bridge, for example.”
“You’ve got it!” said Carmichael. “But why, why?” He and Gordon both went to the spot where the photograph had rested on the cornice two nights before. There was a crack near it, through which it might be possible for a man standing in the dark beyond to keep a watch on the inside of the room, but this crack seemed to hold no further secret. It was Gordon who eventually, fingering the little mouldings on the lower side of the cornice, found one which pushed upwards, acting as a sort of latch. A little tug at the remaining mouldings made the panel turn sideways and disclose a triangular opening of a few inches across, through which Reeves’ vociferous rendering of “Annie Laurie” burst into the stillness of the priests’ hiding-place.
XIII
The Man in the Passage
“Well,” said Gordon, “what do we do next?”
“The first thing,” said Carmichael, “is to shut up this hole again exactly as it was. The next thing is to discuss what we do next. And, Reeves, I think it might be best if you went on playing for a little.”
“If music be the food of detection,” agreed Gordon, “play on. Give us excess of it, that surfeiting the mysterious gentleman behind the panelling may sicken, and so die. Well, he can’t have come through that hole, can he?”
“No,” said Carmichael, “but there’s certain to be another catch just inside which will open the secret door. You see, that hole is obviously for a man to put his arm through. And as the armhole opens from this side, the catch of the door will clearly open from the other. But, just personally, I don’t very much want to open that door without, considering first what we’re going to find on the other side. Is the man armed, for example? Is there likely to be another opening he can escape through? I confess to an aversion from taking any risks.”
“If he came here straight from the railway,” said Reeves from the piano, “he wouldn’t be likely to have any firearms with him.”
“But you forget,” said Gordon, “he must have an accomplice outside; somebody who brings him food—why not weapons too?”
“It’s a conceivable plan,” said Carmichael, “to keep a lookout and catch this confederate of his. Because the confederate presumably uses some other entrance, and if we found that …”
“We could wait at that end, and let Reeves go on playing the piano to him; he couldn’t stick it much longer. No, that’s all very well, but I really think we ought to do something at once, before this man sees that there’s something up, and possibly makes a bolt for it. I know the direct method sounds silly, but I propose that we should go in and take a look round. I don’t mind going first.”
“I don’t see much good in all three of us going in. What happens if our man breaks cover through the other entrance? You see, it may be a member of the club all the time; who could turn up smiling at the other end, and nobody have a right to question him.”
“One moment,” said Carmichael. “Now we come to think of it, we do know where the other end of the passage was. We know that the old chapel was the present billiard-room. Why not lock this door,
