The Middle of Things by J. S. Fletcher (e reader TXT) 📗

mixed up in some nefarious practices. And so I propose, as we've waited long enough, to get out of it, and I'm going to smash that window and yell as loud as I can—somebody will hear it!"

Miss Wickham pointed to a door in the oak panelling, a door set in a corner of the room, across which hung a heavy curtain of red plush, only halfdrawn.

"There's a door there," she remarked, "but I suppose it's only a cupboard."

"Sure to be," said Viner. "However, we'll see." He went across, drew the curtain aside, tried the door, looked within, and uttered an exclamation. "I say!" he called back. "Stairs!"

Miss Wickham came across and looked past his shoulder. There was certainly the head of a staircase before him, and a few stairs to be seen before darkness swallowed up the rest—but the darkness was deep and the atmosphere that came up from below decidedly musty.

"Are you going down there?" she asked. "I don't like it!"

"It seems our only chance," answered Viner. He looked back into the room, and seeing some wax candles standing on a writing-table, seized one and lighted it. "Come along!" he said. "Let's get out of this altogether."

Miss Wickham gathered up her skirts and followed down the stairs, Viner going cautiously in front, with the light held before him in such a fashion that he could see every step. At a turn in the stairway he came across a door, and opening it, saw that it stood at the end of a narrow passage running through the house; at the farther end of the passage he recognized an oak cabinet which he had noticed when Mrs. Killenhall first admitted him.

"I see how these people, whoever they are, manage matters," he remarked over his shoulder as he led his companion forward. "This place has a front and a back entrance. If you don't want to be seen, you know, well, it's convenient. We're approaching the back—and here it is."

The stairs came to an end deep down in the house, terminating in a door which Viner, after leaving his silver-sticked candle, only blown out, on the last step, carefully opened. There before him lay a narrow whitewashed yard, at the end of which they could see a street, evidently pretty much like the rest of the streets in that district. But in the yard a pale-cheeked, sharp-eyed urchin was feeding a couple of rabbits in a wire-faced soap-box, and him Viner immediately hailed.

"You're a smart-looking lad," he said. "Would you like five shillings? Well, have you seen Dr. Martincole this afternoon? You know, the doctor who comes to the house behind us?"

"See him go out abaht an hour ago, guv'nor—wiv anuvver gent," said the lad eagerly, his bright eyes wavering between Viner's face and the hand which he had thrust in his pocket. He pointed to the distant entrance of the yard. "Went aht that way, they did."

"Ah! And what was the other gentleman like?" asked Viner.

"Swell!" answered the informant. "Proper swell, he was!"

"And Dr. Martincole?" Viner continued. "You've seen him many a time, of course. Now what's he like!"

"He's a tall gentleman," said the boy, after some evidently painful thought.

"Yes, but what else—has he got a beard?" asked Viner.

"Couldn't tell you that, guv'nor, d'yer see," said the lad, "'cause he's one o' them gents what allus wears a white silk handkercher abaht his face—up to his eyes. But he's a big man—wears black clothes."

Viner gave the boy his promised reward, and was passing on when Miss
Wickham touched his arm.

"Ask if he's seen a lady go out this way," she said. "That's equally important."

The boy, duly questioned nodded his head.

"I see Mrs. Killerby go out not so long since," he answered. "Her what used to live here one time. Know her well enough."

"Come along!" muttered Viner. "We've hit it! Mrs. Killerby—who is Mrs. Killenhall—used to live here at one time! Good—which means very bad, considering that without doubt the doctor who wears a white silk handkerchief about his face is the muffled man of Lonsdale Passage. Miss Wickham, something has alarmed these birds and they've flown."

"But why were we brought here?" asked Miss Wickham.

"I've an idea as to why you were," said Viner, "and I propose to find out at once if I'm right. Let's get away, find a taxicab, and go to your—but, good heavens!" he went on, breaking off as two men came into the yard. "Here's one of Carless' clerks, and Perkwite the barrister.—What are you doing here?" he demanded, as Millwaters and Perkwite hurried up. "Are you after anybody along there—in that house—the one at the end?"

"We're after a good many things and people in Dr. Martincole's place, Mr. Viner," answered Millwaters. "Mr. Perkwite and I traced Mr. Cave here early in the afternoon; he went in, but he's never come out; we saw you enter—here you are. We saw Miss Wickham and Mrs. Killenhall—there's Miss Wickham, but where's the other lady? And where—"

Viner stopped the clerk's questions with a glance, and he laughed a little as he gave him his answer.

"My dear fellow," he said, "you should have posted somebody at the back here. Why, we don't quite know yet, but Miss Wickham and myself were trapped in there. As for Cave, he must be the man who went away with Martincole. As for Mrs. Killenhall, she too has gone. That boy down there saw all three go, some time ago, while we were locked up. But—what made you watch these people?"

"We followed Cave," said Perkwite, "because Millwaters had been ordered to do so, and because I considered his conduct mysterious. Then, when we saw what was going on here,—your arrival following on that of Miss Wickham and Mrs. Killenhall,—we telephoned for Mr. Carless and more help. Carless and Lord Ellingham, and a couple of detectives, are at the front now. Millwaters and I heard from a denizen of these unlovely parts that there was a back entrance. We'd tried in vain for admittance at the front—"

"But they've got in now, Mr. Perkwite!" exclaimed Millwaters suddenly. "See, there's Mr. Carless at a back window, waving to us to come in. I suppose we can get in by the back, Mr. Viner?"

"Yes—if you like to take the risk of entering people's houses without permission!" said Viner sardonically. "I don't think you'll find anybody or anything there. As for Miss Wickham and myself, we've an engagement elsewhere."

He hurried his companion away, through the street on which they emerged from the whitewashed yard, and out into the Whitechapel Road; he hurried her, too, into the first taxicab which came along empty.

"Now," he said, as they stepped in, "tell this man the name of your bank, and let him go there, quick!"

CHAPTER XXVIII THE TRUTH

Four o'clock had struck, and the doors of the bank were closed when Miss Wickham and Viner hurried up to it, but there was a private entrance at the side, and the man who answered their summons made no difficulty about admitting them when Miss Wickham said who she was. And within a few minutes they were closeted with a manager, who, surprised when they entered, was astonished before many words had been exchanged. For during their dash from the Whitechapel streets Viner had coached his companion as to the questions he wished her to put on arrival at the bank, and she went straight to the point.

"I wanted to know if my companion, Mrs. Killenhall, had called here this afternoon?" begun Miss Wickham.

"She has," answered the manager. "I happened to see her, and I attended to her myself."

"Did she present a check from me?" inquired Miss Wickham.

"Certainly—and I cashed it," said the manager. He gave his customer and her companion a look of interrogation which had a good deal of surprise in it. "Why?" he continued, glancing at Miss Wickham, "wasn't it in order?"

"That," replied Miss Wickham, "depends upon the amount."

"The amount!" he exclaimed. "You know—if the drawer! It was for ten thousand pounds!"

"Then Mrs. Killenhall has done me, or you, out of that," said Miss
Wickham. "The check I gave her was to have been filled up for the amount
of the usual weekly bills—twenty pounds or so. Ten thousand?
Ridiculous!"

"But—it all seemed in order!" exclaimed the concerned manager. "She was as plausible, and all that—and really, you know, Miss Wickham, we know her very well—and, in addition to that, you have a very large balance lying here. Mrs. Killenhall merely mentioned that you wanted this amount, in notes, and that she had called for it—and of course, I cashed the check—your check, remember!—at once."

"I hadn't filled in the amount," remarked Miss Wickham.

"Mrs. Killenhall had often presented checks bearing your signature in which you hadn't filled in the amount," said the manager. "There was nothing unusual, I assure you, in any detail of the affair."

"The most important detail, now," observed Viner dryly, "is to find Mrs.
Killenhall."

The manager, who was obviously filled with amazement at Mrs. Killenhall's audacity, looked from one to the other of his visitors, as if he could scarcely credit their suggestion.

"You really mean me to believe that Mrs. Killenhall has got ten thousand pounds out of Miss Wickham by a trick?" he asked, fixing his gaze at last on Viner.

"What I really mean you to believe," said Viner, rising, "is that a rapid series of events this afternoon has proved to me that Mrs. Killenhall is one of a gang who are responsible for the murder of John Ashton, who stole his diamond and certain papers, and who have endeavoured, very cleverly, to foist one of their number, a scoundrelly clever actor, on the public, as a peer of the realm who had been missing. Mrs. Killenhall—who has another name—probably got wind of possible detection about noon today, and took advantage of Miss Wickham's habit of giving her a weekly check, to provide herself with ample funds. That's really about the truth—and I think Miss Wickham and I had better be seeing the police."

"The very best thing you can do!" responded the manager with alacrity. "And take my advice and go straight to headquarters—go to New Scotland Yard. Just think what this woman—and her accomplices—could do! If she or they had one hour's start of you, they can have already put a good distance between themselves and London; they can be halfway to Dover, or Harwich, or Southampton. And therefore—"

"And therefore all the more reason why we should set somebody on their trail," interrupted Viner, and hurried Miss Wickham out of the manager's room and away to the taxicab which he had purposely kept in waiting. "I don't think Mrs. Killenhall, or Killerby, or whatever her name is, will have hurried away as quickly as all that," he remarked as they sped along toward Whitehall. "My own idea is that, having got hold of your money, she'll probably have made for the headquarters of this precious gang, she and they are sure to have one, for I should say the place in Whitechapel was only an outpost,—and they'll be better able to arrange an escape from there than she would to make an immediate flight. She—but what are you thinking?"

"That I seem to be involved, somehow, in a very strange and curious combination of things," answered Miss Wickham.

"Just so!" agreed Viner. "So do I—and I was literally pitchforked into the very midst of it all by sheer accident. If I hadn't happened to go out for a late stroll on the night on which it began, I should never have—but here we are!"

The official of the Criminal Investigation Department with whom they were shortly closeted, listened carefully and silently to Viner's account of all that had happened. He was one of those never-to-be-sufficiently-praised individuals who never interrupt and always understand, and at the close of Viner's story he said exactly what the narrator was thinking. "The real truth of all this, Mr. Viner," he said, "is that this is probably one of the last chapters in the history of the Lonsdale Passage murder. For if you find this woman and the men who are undoubtedly her accomplices, you will most likely have found, in one or other of them, the murderer of John Ashton!"

"Precisely!" agreed Viner. "Precisely!"

The official rose from his seat and turned to the door.

"Drillford, of your nearest police-station, had this case in charge," he remarked. "I'll just call him on the telephone."

He left the room and was away for several minutes; when he returned there was something like a smile