Of the former occupation, indeed, there were few signs. A scratch had been made now and again in the plaster of the walls, giving a name in initials—a tourist’s trick, but rescued from vulgarity by the circumstances of its origin, and by the addition of a few Christian symbols—a Cross several times, and once the IHS monogram. Just where the light of the little window fell strongest, a few lines of pious doggerel had been scrawled, difficult to read in their crabbed seventeenth-century handwriting. A sconce for a candle, nailed into the wall, was the only solid monument left of these distant memories.
The eye was more immediately challenged by the evidences of a recent visitor’s presence. One expected a rude pallet of straw; a simpler resting-place had been contrived with three cushions obviously looted from the club lounge. There was a candle-end stuck in an empty claret-bottle, and two candles in reserve. There were numerous cigarette-ends thrown carelessly on and around the dust-heap at the corner; all these were of a common and undistinctive brand. There was a rather crumpled copy of Friday’s Daily Mail, probably derived from the same source as the cushions. There was a tin of boot-polish and a brush, as if the stranger had been careful about his appearance even in these singular surroundings. These relics Reeves quickly reviewed with absorbed interest, and then turned to Gordon in despair.
“All these traces,” he said, “and not one that you could call a clue. If the man has escaped us, he has escaped us without leaving a solitary hint of his identity.”
“That hardly surprises me,” said Gordon. “Of course the man has been in a sense your guest, but you could hardly expect him to sit down and write you a Collins.”
“One might have expected one crow of triumph.”
“Perhaps that was one in the billiard-room.”
“In the billiard-room?”
“Yes, somebody had left you a miss in balk.”
“Do you really think …”
“Oh, I don’t know. Let’s go on exploring.”
All this time, except for their own whispers, there had been no noise in the secret passage. Through the little window sounds came from a distance, rarefied as sounds are when they come through a small opening. A motorcycle hooted several times: somebody shouted “Fore!” on the links: far below (as it seemed) somebody was filling a bucket. They crept out again into the passage, the torch switched on again: for some twenty paces they were on the level, then they began to descend, and almost immediately the ceiling grew higher above them—they were in a wall-space instead of a floor-space once more. Just as they reached the foot of the steps, an unforeseen development threw all their plans into confusion—the passage branched in two directions, one branch going straight on, the other turning off sharply to the right.
“What do we do here?” whispered Reeves, flashing the torch up either corridor in turn. “Whichever way we go, it seems to me, we may be taken from the rear.”
“I know; we must chance it. We can’t separate, because we’ve only got one torch. We’ll try the branch that goes straight on, but be ready to turn round at a moment’s notice.”
This passage, after a short distance, seemed to terminate in a blank wall. But there was a crack in the wall and Gordon, bending down, saw through the crack the billiard-room as they had left it a quarter of an hour ago, the balls still in position, the door still shut behind which Carmichael and Marryatt were on guard.
“Switch the light higher up,” he whispered.
Surely Reeves’ torch was giving more light than usual? It seemed to have suddenly doubled its brightness. And then, just as he realized that another torch had been turned on from behind them, a strange voice came out of the darkness:
“Now then, you there, I’ve got you covered. You this side, drop that torch. … That’s right: now, you in front, put that revolver down. … Now turn and go back the way you came.”
It was humiliating, but there was nothing to be done. They had been taken in the rear by somebody coming up the other arm of the passage; they could see nothing of him, looking straight into the light of his torch. He stood at the junction of the two branches to let them pass, still invisible: as they went back on their tracks, Gordon had a wild idea of doubling into the priests’ room, but he saw it would be hopeless. He would be unarmed, caught in a trap, with a man who was probably already a murderer covering him with a revolver. They went on, an ignominious procession, right up to the opening in Reeves’ room, which they had left ajar behind them.
“Step right out,” said the voice, “and don’t stir till I tell you.”
Obediently they crept out into Reeves’ room, expecting the stranger to shut the door behind them and fasten it in some way still unknown to them. It was a surprise to both of them when the secret entrance was once more blocked with the shadow of a human form, and they were followed into the daylight by a quite unmistakable policeman.
XIV
A Chase, Ending with a Surprise
“Now then,” said the policeman, falling back on a formula in face of an unexpected situation. “What’s all this about?”
There can be no doubt that, on most occasions, the sense of humour is a handicap in life. It implies introspection, and he who introspects is commonly lost. But laughter is, in great part, the child of innocence, and it is doubtful if anything could have exculpated the two amateur detectives from the charge of being criminals so speedily as the complete breakdown of Gordon’s gravity when the
