The Triumphs of Eugène Valmont by Robert Barr (most popular ebook readers .TXT) 📗

distances. I surmise that the secret room is to the left of this stairway. Probably a whole suite of rooms exists, for there is certainly a stair coinciding with this one, and up that stair at midnight I heard a club-footed man ascend. Either that, or the ghost that has frightened you all, and, as I have said, I believe in the man.'

Here the official made the first sensible remark I had yet heard him utter:—

'If the walls are so thick that a prisoner's cry has not been heard, how could you hear his footsteps, which make much less noise?'

'That is very well put, constable, and when the same thing occurred to me earlier this morning, I began to study the architecture of this castle. In the first place, the entrance hall is double as wide at the big doors as it is near the stairway. If you stand with your back to the front door you will at once wonder why the builders made this curious and unnecessary right angle, narrowing the farther part of the hall to half its width. Then, as you gaze at the stair, and see that marvellous carved oak newel post standing like a monumental column, you guess, if you have any imagination, that the stairway, like the hall, was once double as wide as it is now. We are seeing only half of it, and doubtless we shall find a similar newel post within the hidden room. You must remember, constable, that these secret apartments are no small added chambers. Twice they have sheltered a king.'

The constable's head bent low at the mention of royalty. I saw that his insular prejudice against me and my methods was vanishing, and that he had come to look upon me with greater respect than was shown at first.

'The walls need not be thick to be impenetrable to sound. Two courses of brick, and a space between filled with deafening would do it. The secret apartment has been cut off from the rest of the house since the castle was built, and was not designed by the original architect. The partition was probably built in a hurry to fulfil a pressing need, and it was constructed straight up the middle of the stair, leaving the stout planks intact, each step passing thus, as it were, through the wall. Now, when a man walks up the secret stairway, his footsteps reverberate until one would swear that some unseen person was treading the visible boards on the outside.'

'By Jove!' said the constable, in an awed tone of voice.[162]

'Now, officer, I have here a pickaxe and a crowbar. I propose that we settle the question at once.'

But to this proposal the constable demurred.

'You surely would not break the wall without permission from his lordship in London?'

'Constable, I suspect there is no Lord Rantremly in London, and that we will find a very emaciated but genuine Lord Rantremly within ten feet of us. I need not tell you that if you are instrumental in his immediate rescue without the exercise of too much red tape, your interests will not suffer because you the more speedily brought food and drink to the lord paramount of your district.'

'Right you are,' cried the constable, with an enthusiasm for which I was not prepared. 'Where shall we begin?'

'Oh, anywhere; this wall is all false from the entrance hall to some point up here. Still, as the butler was carrying the meal upstairs I think we shall save time if we begin on the landing.'

I found the constable's brawn much superior to his brain. He worked like a sansculotte on a barricade. When we had torn down part of the old oak panelling, which it seemed such a pity to mutilate with axe and crowbar, we came upon a brick wall, that quickly gave way before the strength of the constable. Then we pulled out some substance like matting, and found a second brick wall, beyond which was a further shell of panelling. The hole we made revealed nothing but darkness inside, and although we shouted, there was no answer. At last, when we had hewn it large enough for a man to enter, I took with me an electric torch, and stepped inside, the constable following, with crowbar still in hand. I learned, as I had surmised, that we were in the upper hall of a staircase nearly as wide as the one on the outside. A flash of the light showed a door corresponding with the fireplace of the upper landing, and this door not being locked, we entered a large room, rather dimly lighted by strongly barred windows that gave into a blind courtyard, of which there had been no indication heretofore, either outside or inside the castle. Broken glass crunched under our feet, and I saw that the floor was strewn with wine bottles whose necks had been snapped off to save the pulling of the cork. On a mattress at the farther end of the room lay a man with gray hair, and shaggy, unkempt iron-gray beard. He seemed either asleep or dead, but when I turned my electric light full on his face he[163] proved to be still alive, for he rubbed his eyes languidly, and groaned, rather than spoke:—

'Is that you at last, you beast of a butler? Bring me something to eat, in Heaven's name!'

I shook him wider awake. He seemed to be drowsed with drink, and was fearfully emaciated. When I got him on his feet, I noticed then the deformity that characterised one of them. We assisted him through the aperture, and down into the dining-room, where he cried out continually for something to eat, but when we placed food before him, he could scarcely touch it. He became more like a human being when he had drunk two glasses of wine, and I saw at once he was not as old as his gray hair seemed to indicate. There was a haunted look in his eyes, and he watched the door as if apprehensive.

'Where is that butler?' he asked at last.

'Dead,' I replied.

'Did I kill him?'

'No; he fell down the stairway and broke his neck.'

The man laughed harshly.

'Where is my father?'

'Who is your father?'

'Lord Rantremly.'

'He is dead also.'

'How came he to die?'

'He died from a stroke of paralysis on the morning the butler was killed.'

The rescued man made no comment on this, but turned and ate a little more of his food. Then he said to me:—

'Do you know a girl named Sophia Brooks?'

'Yes. For ten years she thought you dead.'

'Ten years! Good God, do you mean to say I've been in there only ten years? Why, I'm an old man. I must be sixty at least.'

'No; you're not much over thirty.'

'Is Sophia—' He stopped, and the haunted look came into his eyes again.

'No. She is all right, and she is here.'

'Here?'

'Somewhere in the grounds. I sent her and the servant out for a walk, and told them not to return till luncheon time, as the constable and I had something to do, and did not wish to be interrupted.'[164]

The man ran his hand through his long tangled beard.

'I should like to be trimmed up a bit before I see Sophia,' he said.

'I can do that for you, my lord,' cried the constable.

'My lord?' echoed the man. 'Oh, yes, I understand. You are a policeman, are you not?'

'Yes, my lord, chief constable.'

'Then I shall give myself up to you. I killed the butler.'

'Oh, impossible, my lord!'

'No, it isn't. The beast, as I called him, was getting old, and one morning he forgot to close the door behind him. I followed him stealthily out, and at the head of the stair planted my foot in the small of his back, which sent him headlong. There was an infernal crash. I did not mean to kill the brute, but merely to escape, and just as I was about to run down the stairway, I was appalled to see my father looking like—looking like—well, I won't attempt to say what he looked like; but all my old fear of him returned. As he strode towards me, along the corridor, I was in such terror that I jumped through the secret door and slammed it shut.'

'Where is the secret door?' I asked.

'The secret door is that fireplace. The whole fireplace moves inward if you push aside the carved ornament at the left-hand corner.'

'Is it a dummy fireplace, then?'

'No, you may build a fire in it, and the smoke will escape up the chimney. But I killed the butler, constable, though not intending it, I swear.'

And now the constable shone forth like the real rough diamond he was.

'My lord, we'll say nothing about that. Legally you didn't do it. You see, there's been an inquest on the butler and the jury brought in the verdict, "Death by accident, through stumbling from the top of the stair." You can't go behind a coroner's inquest, my lord.'

'Indeed,' said his lordship, with the first laugh in which he had indulged for many a year. 'I don't want to go behind anything, constable, I've been behind that accursed chimney too long to wish any further imprisonment.'

[165]

7. The Liberation of Wyoming Ed

A man should present the whole truth to his doctor, his lawyer, or his detective. If a doctor is to cure, he must be given the full confidence of the patient; if a lawyer is to win a case he needs to know what tells against his client as well as the points in his favour; if a secret agent is to solve a mystery all the cards should be put on the table. Those who half trust a professional man need not be disappointed when results prove unsatisfactory.

A partial confidence reposed in me led to the liberation of a dangerous criminal, caused me to associate with a robber much against my own inclination, and brought me within danger of the law. Of course, I never pretend to possess that absolute confidence in the law which seems to be the birthright of every Englishman. I have lived too intimately among the machinery of the law, and have seen too many of its ghastly mistakes, to hold it in that blind esteem which appears to be prevalent in the British Isles.

There is a doggerel couplet which typifies this spirit better than anything I can write, and it runs:—