Читать книгу The Treasure House of Martin Hews - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 10

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It must have been, as I afterwards discovered, about a quarter to three, an hour after I had retired to bed, that, notwithstanding my fatigue, I woke with a violent start. My first impulse was to look at the globes on the wall opposite to me. Not one of them was burning. I touched the electric switch of the lamp at the side of my bed and I received a genuine shock. There was no result. Stiff in every limb, I tumbled out of bed and tried the other switch. Still no result. Then, as I stood there, I heard a soft tapping. I threw open the door. A figure, at first undistinguishable, was standing there, holding an electric torch. Directly she spoke, I realised that it was Beatrice Essiter.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

She crossed the threshold, and still holding the door handle, listened for a moment intently.

“I can’t tell,” she confided. “For one thing the whole of the electric installation seems to have gone wrong. There isn’t a light in the house. The secret doors won’t open, nor will the telephone ring.”

“That’s queer,” I muttered. “Could any of Joseph’s gang have got at the engine?”

“That’s what I have been wondering,” she replied uneasily. “Jenkins, the electrician, never appeared after the fight was over, and I fancied just as I was getting into bed that the lights were becoming fainter.”

I struggled into some clothes.

“The police searched the whole house,” I remarked. “Did they visit the engine room?”

“I believe they did. I remember how surprised the Inspector seemed to be at the size of our engine. Jenkins must have been on duty then, or they couldn’t have got in without breaking the door down—and there’s something else.”

She paused and listened again. From where we were on the ground floor to the roof, the great house seemed almost ominously silent.

“I was just going off to sleep,” she went on, “when I fancied that I heard voices in the room where that little Jew girl is. It was then I found out that the lights weren’t going, and I am afraid I made some noise in groping about before I could find the torches. Anyhow, she was alone when she opened the door to me.”

“Did she let you in?”

“Of course. I looked all around. There was no one there.”

“Did she seem uneasy?”

“I fancied that she did.”

“Do any of your secret passages connect her apartment with any other portion of the house?”

“Yes. If she knew where her door was, and had a plan, she could find her way almost anywhere. The only thing is that none of the switches which open the concealed doors are working now, as the power has broken down. You know that one of the plans is missing? Miles confessed this evening that he had stolen it and sold it to Joseph.”

I reflected for a moment.

“You are sure the Inspector actually visited the engine room?” I asked.

“Quite certain. If any one of the raiders had used the plan to find their way in there by the secret passage, and done any damage to the plant or to Jenkins, he must have found it out.”

“What about the girl? Did you tell her that you thought you had heard voices in her room? Had she any explanation to offer?”

“She was simply rather impudent. Declared that she must have been saying her prayers.”

“You haven’t communicated with your uncle, I suppose?”

“I tried to get into the library,” she confided, “but I couldn’t open the door. There is another way, of course, but I thought I had better come and find you. I don’t know why,” she concluded, with a little tremor in her tone, “I am not nervous as a rule, but at the present moment I am absolutely terrified.”

“I don’t think you need be,” I assured her. “Why, the police searched the place thoroughly and they’ve only been gone an hour or two. Where does your uncle sleep?”

“In a room leading out of the library,” she explained. “He very seldom goes to bed at night, though. He generally writes and works out plans for the next day until six o’clock, and goes to bed until twelve.”

“Then he should be in the library now?”

“I imagine so,” she answered, after a moment’s hesitation. “I suppose if I hadn’t been so foolish, I should have gone to the other door.”

“Much better to come for me,” I told her—“especially if you were feeling jumpy. I’ll go up at once. You haven’t another torch, have you?”

She handed me the one she was carrying.

“I have two more in my pocket. I’ll show you the way up by the stairs, and—”

“Well?”

“It is foolish of me, of course, but bring your gun. This may be just silliness on my part, but it isn’t often I get like this. There are one or two other things which I don’t quite understand.”

I loaded my automatic quickly and slipped it into my pocket. In the case of a fight, I knew that I should have to use it, for my arms and legs were still stiff, and my wound painful. Then I followed her out into the now deserted hall and mounted the stairs with her. We paused first when we arrived at the third storey outside the door which opened and closed only by the electric appliances from Martin Hews’ desk. I pressed the button, but nothing happened. There was no actual sound to be heard in the room, and yet I too was conscious of an uneasy feeling. A thin stream of light was just visible under the door, but that was not unusual if Martin Hews remained there all night. Beyond that, however, if such a thing were possible, I should have said that I was conscious of waves of sound which never became absolutely definite, and yet left me with a disturbed sense of movement, of action, in the closed room.

“Where is the other door?” I whispered.

“This way,” she answered.

She led me a few paces down the corridor and directed my fingers on to a small, ordinary door knob.

“Open it and go in,” she enjoined, “and make some excuse to Uncle if he is alone. If there is anything wrong, I will go and fetch help.”

I gripped my automatic with my right hand, turned the handle with my left, and looked in from the threshold upon a queer and thrilling sight. It was a matter of seconds only before my appearance was discovered, but those seconds were quite enough for me to take in every detail of that amazing scene. Martin Hews was seated at his desk, stiff and rigid, his hands palms downward upon the table, his eyes protuberant, his mouth a little open. He was watched over by the Inspector, still wearing his uniform, but with the upper part of his features now concealed by a black mask. He was only a yard or two away from my employer, whom he was covering with a vicious-looking automatic. In the middle of the room were two large kit bags, one of them already filled and strapped, ready for removal. The rosewood-rimmed show cases, which contained a collection of gold medals and some priceless, uncut precious stones, were already empty, and the taller of the two policemen, also in a mask, was in the act of cutting a small Corregio which hung over the door from its frame. The third policeman had lifted his mask for a moment whilst he held an exquisite pink pearl up to the lamp, by the light of which they were working, before finally approving of it, and seated on the back of a divan, facing me, with a cigarette in the corner of her mouth, was Rachel. Never in my life have I looked upon so thrilling a scene as that dimly lit apartment—the three men, with their sinister black masks, Martin Hews, his face dark with terror, his eyes almost starting from his head, and the girl lolling there, with a cigarette dangling from her red lips....

My entrance had been so noiseless that I had time to take all this in before I was observed, and there is no doubt whatever that if I had been anything but a fool I should have stepped softly back and waited for the result of the alarm which Beatrice Essiter had no doubt already given. Before I had fully realised the situation, however, Rachel saw me. Her great eyes glowed across the room, and the cigarette fell from her fingers. For what reason I could not at that moment surmise, in the act of screaming out, she seemed to change her mind, and stifled the cry in her throat. Her start, however, had been sufficient. The man who was examining the pearl looked quickly up, swung round and faced me. I covered him at once.

“Hands up! Both of you!” I cried. “Quick!”

The man who had been cutting the Corregio from the frame obeyed. The nearer one hesitated. I could see the wicked flash of his eyes as he dropped the pearl from his long, skinny fingers, and ducked. His hand was on its way towards his hip pocket, and with the other man to look after, I dared not hesitate a second. I shot at his legs, and although I missed them the first time, the second bullet must have broken his kneecap, for he went spinning round and the gun slid out of his hand on to the carpet. The other man had crept a step nearer to me, but his hands were still upraised. I had him covered again whilst his companion lay writhing upon the carpet.

“Shoot him, you b——y fool!” the latter shouted. “Take a risk, can’t you?”

“Gun’s in my helmet upon the table,” the man spat out. “Kick me yours.”

The wounded man made an effort to roll over, but stopped at the sound of my voice.

“Touch the gun, and you’re a dead man,” I warned him. “Keep your hands up, you there!”

What followed seemed to me at that moment, as it has done many times since, the strangest part of the whole amazing episode. I was beginning to think that I had won my way through and was master of the situation. The man on the ground had fainted with his last effort to reach his gun. The other was standing obediently well away from the table, with his hands up, and, according to his own admission, unarmed. Then suddenly I heard Rachel’s voice—a hoarse, passionate whisper.

“Look out, you fool! Look out, behind the curtains!”

Even as she shouted, I remembered the third man at the far end of the room. His chair was vacant. Martin Hews, unguarded, was leaning forward across the table, his face distorted with mingled rage and fear, and a miniature automatic, with a specially made butt, clenched in his hand. The man who had been guarding him had disappeared, but Rachel’s cry had disclosed his plan. The whole of the left-hand side of the room between the two doors was hung with magnificent tapestry, towards which she had pointed. I saw the bulge in it grow nearer every moment as the pseudo-inspector crept up towards me. About three yards from where he now was came a parting in the tapestry. I watched it with burning eyes, watched for the glitter of a gun, expecting to see it pushed through at any moment. With it all, too, I realised another imminent source of danger. Rachel could have handed the gun to the man who had been cutting the picture from the frame, and I would have been powerless to interfere. She sat there instead, watching—as I watched—that bulge behind the tapestry drawing closer and closer. The man with his hands up, who had already been making gestures, hissed over his shoulder.

“Give me that gun, you little devil!”

Rachel made no movement. It was hard work to watch everything, but the bulge was still more than the length of a man’s arm from the parting, and I allowed myself one glance at Rachel’s face. I caught only a glimpse of it, but it was enough to tell me that so far as she was concerned I was safe.

“Get your own gun, you clumsy bungler!” she shouted. “Calling me names too! Three of you against one man, and him a toff! Gawd, I wonder what Jo would say to the mucking lot of you? Watch the bulge, guv’nor.”

I watched, though my gun was still covering the other man. Nearer and nearer came that quiver behind the tapestry. Just as I expected, I saw an inch or two of dull, sinister metal slowly forced through the opening. Shooting men in cold blood in the library of an English country house was nothing to my fancy, but in another second, when his eye had crept up to the chink, I was his mark. I swung around and pulled the trigger of my gun twice in succession, trying to hit the arm which held the pistol. The other man, who had been watching his opportunity, leaped forward the moment he was uncovered, but in a second there was the spit of a shot from behind him, and he staggered round to fall with a sickening crash upon the carpet. Martin Hews, steering his chair beautifully between the bodies of the two wounded men, drew up at my side, also covering the partition in the tapestry. We waited breathlessly. The man in hiding was evidently hit, for there was no movement, and no sound but his groans.

“Don’t trust any of them, sir,” I shouted. “Keep your hand upon your gun. The man on the floor’s coming to.”

Martin Hews smiled. Throughout the whole of my somewhat tangled memories of that scene, I remember his smile. There was ugly humour, there was the blood lust, there was ferocity, all there.

“Well spoken, my gallant Major!” he cried. “My preserver, and a made man from this moment. Little lady on the divan, we will find you a prince for a sweetheart, not a guttersnipe.”

She had slipped to her feet. Her air was one of bravado, but I think that even then she began to realise what she had done, that she had turned against her people, that she would probably never again dare to show herself in her old haunts. Perhaps she knew. At any rate, she shrugged her shoulders and wiped the cigarette ash from her sleeve.

“They fight dirty,” she declared. “They’ve got what was coming to them. Jo would say the same if he was here.”

Then I heard the tramping of feet, the panting of men running, and we knew that our ordeal was over. Minchin was first into the room, followed pell-mell by Huntley and Grateson. In the background I caught a glimpse of Beatrice Essiter, and all the chill ill humour had gone from her face, and her eyes were glowing with a great relief.