'They?' repeated Halliday, starting to get up. 'You don't mean-?'
'I mean Darworth and young Joseph, that's who. They only meant to show that the powers, the evil powers, were getting out of control; that they were fighting us, and firing that stone thing at you because you insisted on coming here. It was for somebody, anyhow... That's right. Look up. Higher. Yes, it came from the top of the staircase; from the landing.... Halliday's knee-muscles were not as steady as he had thought. He knelt there, absurdly, until his own rage helped him to his feet.
'Darworth? Man, are you telling me that – that swine,' he pointed, 'stood up there on the landing, and dropped-? -'
'Steady, Mr. Halliday. Don't raise your voice, if you please - not at all. I don't doubt Mr. Darworth is out there where they left him. Just so. There's nobody on the landing. It was that kid Joseph.'
'Masters, I'll swear it wasn't,' I said. 'I happened to have my light on him the whole time. Besides, he couldn't have---“
The inspector nodded. He seemed possessed of an endless patience. 'Ah? You see? That's part of the trick. I'm not exactly what you'd call an educated man, gentlemen,' he explained, with a rather judicial air and broad gesture, 'but this trick, now ... well, it's old. Giles Sharp, Woodstock Palace, sixteen forty-nine. Anne Robinson, Vauxhall, seventeen seventy-two. It's all in my files. A gentleman at the British Museum has been very helpful. I'll tell you. how they worked it in just a minute. Excuse me.'
From his hip-pocket, solicitous as a steward, he whipped out a cheap gunmetal flask, which had been carefully polished. 'Try some of this, Mr. Halliday. I'm not a drinking man myself, but I always take it along when I tackle matters of this kind. I find it useful-eh? For others, I mean. There was a friend of my wife, who used to go and visit a medium at Kensington.”
Halliday leaned against the stairs and grinned. He was still pale; but, somehow, a great weight seemed lifted from him.
'Go on, you swine,' he said abruptly, peering up at the landing. 'Go on, damn you. ' Chuck another.' He shook his fist. 'Now that I know the thing's a trick, I don't care what you do. That's what I was afraid of: that it wasn't. Thanks, Masters. I'm not quite so bad as your wife's friend, but that thing was a jolly close call. I will have one.... The question is, what do we do now?'
Masters motioned us to follow, and we went over the creaking boards and out into the moldy gloom of the passage beyond. Halliday's flashlight was smashed, and I offered him mine; but he refused it.
'Look sharp for more traps,' the inspector growled in a whisper. 'They may have the whole house flummoxed.
The point's just this. Darworth and Company are up to some game. They mean to put on a show of some sort, and for some more than ordinary reason. I want to find out why, but I don't want to crash in on Darworth,' he nodded, 'out there. If I could make sure he doesn't leave his post, and at the same time keep an eye on that kid……Hum. Hay-em – “
All this time his light had been taking in details. The passage was narrow, but of great length, and reenforced by heavy beams; on either side were half-a-dozen doors, set beside barred windows apparently giving on interior rooms. I tried to conceive their purpose, in the middle seventeenth century when this house had been built, and then I remembered. Merchant's warehouse rooms, of course.
Peering through one set of bars (it might have been a counting-house), I saw a tank-like desolation strewn with forgotten firewood. I had hazy remembrances of speckled porcelain, Mecca muslin, canes and snuff-bottles, which was curious, because I could not remember having read of these things. The images came suddenly, mixed with the stifling uneasy air. There were no forms or faces - if you can except the suggestion of somebody pacing up and down, up and down, endlessly, on the brick floor :but only the things of finery. I cursed myself for growing light-headed in the bad air; yet the blight of this house grew and grew in my brain. Staring at the dropsical walls, I wondered why they called it Plague Court.
'Hullo!' said Masters, and I pulled up short behind Halliday.
He had reached a door at the end of the passage, and had been peering outside. The rain fell very lightly now. On our right, a smaller passage wandered off into a black rabbit-warren of kitchens which looked like burnt-out furnaces. The other door led into the yard. Turning his light upwards, Masters pointed.
It was a bell. A rusty bell set into an iron framework, about the size of a top-hat, and it hung in the low roof just over the door to the yard. Since it seemed only a means of communication from the old days of the house, I saw nothing odd about it until Masters shifted his lamp a little, and pointed again. Down the side of the bell ran a length of fine wire, new wire; gleaming faintly.
'More tricks?' said Halliday, after a pause. 'Yes. It's wire right enough. It goes . . . here, down the side, out through the boards of this window, into the yard. Is this another stunt?'
'Don't touch it!' said Masters, as the other stretched up his hand. He peered out into the dark. The cool wind brought a smell of mud, and other odors less pleasant. 'Don't want to call the attention of our friend out there, but I shall have to risk a flash.... Yes. The wire comes out, down, and runs across the ground towards the little stone house. Hurrum. Well ...'
With him we stared out. The rain had died to a mutter of splashings, to stirrings along the gutters and a sullen drip-drip dose beside us, but it still made prankish noises in the yard. I could see very little, for the sky was overcast, and shapes of buildings blocked it out round the wall which enclosed the big piece of ground at the rear. The little stone house was about forty yards away from us. Its only light was a flickering gleam that showed, slyly, at the gratings of little embrasures - they were too small to be called windows - set dose under the roof. It stood lonely, with a crooked tree growing near it.
The light flickered again, curled eerily, with a sort of invitation, and shrank back. That faint spatter and stir of the rain made the muddy yard sound as though it were infested with rats.
Halliday made a movement like one who is cold.
'Excuse my ignorance,' he said. 'This may seem excellent fun, but it isn't sense. Cats with their throats cut. Bells with wire attached to them. Thirty-odd pounds of stone flower-box chucked at you by somebody who, isn't there. I'm like the chap at the Circumlocution Office; I want to know. Besides, there was something in that passage - I could have sworn.... '
I said: 'The wire on the bell probably doesn't mean anything. It's too obvious. Darworth may have arranged it with the rest of them as a sort of alarm-bell, in case '
'Ah! Just so. In case of what?' Masters muttered. He glanced sharply to the right, as though he had heard something. 'Ah, ah, but I wish I'd been prepared. They both need watching, and (excuse me) neither of you gentlemen knows enough of the dodges - Just between ourselves, and confidentially, I'd give a month's pay to lay Darworth by the heels.'
'You're dead-set anti-Darworth, aren't you?' asked Halliday, looking at him curiously. Masters' tone had not been pleasant. 'Why? You can't do anything to him, you know. I mean to say, you told me yourself he's no Gerrard Street fortune-teller making the tambourines rattle a guinea at a time. If a man wants to investigate psychical research, or try a seance for his friends in his own home, that's his business. Beyond exposing him- '
'H'm. That,' agreed Masters, 'is Mr. Darworth's own copper-bottomed cleverness. You heard what Miss Latimer said. He don't get embroiled. He's only a psychical researcher. He's careful to be only the patron of a tame medium. Then, if anything happens ... why, he was deceived by a fraud, and his honesty isn't questioned any more than the dupes he introduced his medium to. And got money from. Hecould do
it all over again. Now, as man to man, Mr. Halliday, come! - Lady Benning is a wealthy woman, isn't she?'
'Yes.'
'And Miss Latimer?'
'I believe so. If that's what he wants-' Halliday snapped, and then checked himself. He went on, obviously changing what he intended to say, 'If that's what he wants, I'd write him a check for five thousand any time he agreed to clear out.'
'He wouldn't do business. Not him. But you can see this is a heaven-sent chance. If he tries anything himself tonight - and, you see, not knowing I'm here-why - huh!' Masters grunted expressively. 'What's more, the kid don't know me. I never saw friend Joseph before. Excuse me, gentlemen. I won't be a minute; but I want to - um- reconnoiter. Stop there, and don't move till I get back.'
Before we could speak he had gone down the two or three steps into the yard and disappeared. Though he
