"No," replied Thorndyke. "That would be impracticable. But I think we could achieve the same result in another way. At any rate, I will take the preliminary measures before we go away from here, in case they may be needed."
He withdrew the "spy-glass" from the keyhole, and, having put it away in the research case, produced from the latter a small cardboard box which, when the lid was removed, was seen to contain a number of little cylinders of hardwood about six inches long and of varying diameters, from a quarter of an inch up to five-eighths.
"These," he explained, "are gauges that my assistant has made to obtain the exact dimensions of the keyhole, so that he can make a more efficient instrument."
"The instrument that you have got is efficient enough," said Woodburn. "The trouble will be to get someone to stay here to use it."
"Perhaps we can produce an instrument that will do its work without an attendant," replied Thorndyke. "But we will talk about that when we have made our survey. Now, I will just take these measurements."
He seated himself once more and proceeded to pass the larger cylinders one by one through the keyhole. All of them passed through fairly easily excepting the two largest, which were returned to the box.
"The internal diameter of the keyhole," said Thorndyke, "is nearly nine-sixteenths of an inch. Probably it has been a little enlarged by wear, but even so the key must have been an out-size. I shall call it half an inch."
He marked, with a pencil, the approved cylinder, and, having returned it to the box, announced that he was ready to proceed to the next item in the programme.
"Perhaps," he suggested, "we had better take a glance at the lofts which are over the gallery."
Mr. Woodburn looked interrogatively at the housekeeper, who volunteered the information that the entrance to them was at the top of the back staircase, and that the key was on her bunch.
"The entrance to the lofts is not sealed, then?" Thorndyke remarked.
"Apparently not," said Woodburn; "which suggests that we are not likely to find anything of interest in them. Still, we may as well have a look at them and satisfy ourselves."
We followed the housekeeper through a surprising labyrinth of passages and rooms, which seemed to be on all sorts of levels, with steps up and down, which made it necessary to approach all doors with caution to avoid being tripped up or stepping into empty air. Eventually, we came to an unlocked door which gave entrance to the back staircase, up which Mrs. Gibbins preceded us in a dim twilight. At each landing, open doors gave glimpses into dark and mysterious corridors which apparently burrowed among the bedrooms, and the top landing showed us, in addition, a locked door with an enormous keyhole, into which the housekeeper inserted a ponderous key. The door creaked open, and revealed a flight of narrow, ladder-like stairs, up which we crawled painfully and cautiously, Thorndyke bringing up the rear, encumbered with his research case and the Poltonic walking-stick.
There was no door at the top of the stairs (which seemed a lost opportunity on the part of the architect), and only a pretence of a landing outside the narrow doorway which gave entrance to the lofts. Here we stood for a few moments, looking into the long range of well-lighted lofts that stretched away on either side. There was something a little weird and impressive in the aspect of those great, wide attics with their rough oaken floors, littered with the cast-off household gods of forgotten generations, stretching away into the distance among the massive and almost unhewn timber of the great roof. Each of the two ranges—for we stood at the angle of the body and the wing of the house—was lighted by a pair of dormer windows on each side, filled with little panes of greenish glass set in leaded casements, so that we were able to see the whole extent with the exception of a few dark corners at the extreme ends.
"Well," said Woodburn, looking a little distastefully at the littered floor, covered, as it seemed, with the dust of centuries, "is it worthwhile to go in? Looks a bit dusty," he added, with a glance at his brilliantly polished boots.
"I think I will just walk down the lofts," said Thorndyke, "as a matter of form, though it is pretty clear that there have been no recent visitors. But there is no need for you to come."
That it was but a mere formality became evident as soon as we had started; for, glancing back, I could see that we had left plain and conspicuous footprints in the impalpable dust that lay in an even coating on the bumpy floor. Evidently, we were the first visitors who had trodden that floor for, at least, some years.
"Still," said Thorndyke, when I made a remark to this effect, "we had to establish the fact. If there is some secret way into the gallery, our only chance of discovering it will be by excluding, one by one, all the places in which it is not to be found. This is evidently one of them."
"Well," said Woodburn, as we emerged; "we can write off the lofts, I think. Dust has its uses, after all. What are we going to explore next?"
"I suppose," Thorndyke replied, "we had better examine the outside of the premises."
"Yes," Woodburn agreed, "that seems to be the reasonable thing to do, seeing that, if there have been any visitors, that is where they must have come from. But there is mighty little to see. I can tell you that much, for I have made a thorough inspection, myself."
Mr. Woodburn was right. There was very little indeed to see. The gallery stood above a range of what were now cellars, but had formerly been rooms, as we gathered from the windows, some entirely bricked up, while others were reduced to small openings, glazed with ground glass and protected by stout iron bars. The only approach to them was from within the house, by a massive door at the bottom of a flight of stone steps; and that door was not only sealed, but also secured by a heavy padlock of the Yale type, of which the minute key-slit was covered by a sealed label.
From outside the house, there was no entrance of any kind to the gallery wing. The windows of the gallery itself looked on the garden at the back of the house; but an inspection of them by means of the ladder, which had been put there for our convenience, only served to confirm Woodburn’s account of them. They were obviously untouched; and the lace curtains on the inside made it impossible to get the faintest glimpse into the room. The windows of the rooms which communicated with the gallery were equally impossible as a means of access. We examined them with the aid of the ladder from the narrow strip of garden that separated the side of the wing the high wall that enclosed the whole domain. They, also, were evidently intact, and were guarded internally by massive shutters that effectually excluded the possibility of seeing in.
"That seems to be the lot," said Woodburn, as we put the ladder back where we had found it, "unless there is anything else that you would like to see."
Thorndyke looked up at the house, inquisitively, and then glanced along the wall down the garden. "I think," said he, "I understood you to say that there was a churchyard on the other side of that wall."
"Yes. Do you want to see it? I don’t know why you should."
"We may as well take a look at it," was the reply. "Any visitors, entering the house at night, would probably come over that wall rather than through the front grounds, particularly if there is a churchyard to take off from. A country churchyard is pretty secluded at night. It would even be possible to use a portable ladder."
"So it would," agreed Woodburn. "And this is a disused churchyard. They have built a new church at the other end of the village, the Lord knows why. They had better have restored the old church. But any visitors to the old churchyard would have the place to themselves at night."
"Then let us go and inspect it," said Thorndyke. "If there have been repeated visits, there ought to be some traces of the visitors."
We went back through the house and out by way of the drive and the front gate. Turning to the right, we walked along the front of the Manor House grounds to the end of the enclosing wall where it was joined by the lower wall of the churchyard. Presently, we came to a dilapidated wooden gate which yawned wide open on its rickety hinges. Passing in through this, we took o
ur way along an overgrown path, past a tall headstone and a decayed altar tomb, enclosed by rusty, ivy-grown railings. In front of us, a great yew tree cast a deep shadow across the path; and beyond, a smallish, ancient-looking church, with gaping windows from which the tracery had disappeared, huddled under a dense mantle of ivy, looking the very picture of desolation and decay. As we walked, Thorndyke looked about him critically, keeping an attentive eye on the ground beside the path, the high, neglected grass which everywhere sprang up between the graves being obviously favourable to a search for "traces."
So we advanced until we entered the gloomy shadow of the great yew tree. Here Thorndyke halted to look about him. "Somewhere in this neighbourhood," said he, "would be the most probable place for a nocturnal operator to make his arrangements. That is the Manor wall in front of us. I can see the roof of the gallery wing through the trees. That big sarcophagus tomb will be nearly opposite the end of the wing."
"Yes," I said. "It seems to mark the position that would be most convenient for negotiating the wall; and if you notice the grass, there seems to be a faint, rather wide track, as if it had been walked over by someone who had been careful not to tread it down all in one place."
"I think you are right," said Woodburn. "Now you mention it, I think I can make out the track quite plainly. It seems to lead towards that tomb."
"The grass has certainly been walked over," Thorndyke agreed, "and I see no signs of its having been trodden anywhere else. But don’t let us confuse matters by walking over it ourselves. Let us strike across the graves and approach along the wall."
We followed this course, keeping close to the wall as we approached the great tomb. The latter stood about ten feet from the wall, and, as we drew near, I was surprised to notice that the grass between the tomb and the wall appeared quite untrodden.
Thorndyke had also noticed this rather unexpected circumstance, and, when we were within a yard or two of the tomb, he halted and looked curiously along the ground at the foot of the wall. "There is certainly no sign of the use of any ladder," he remarked. "In fact, there is no indication of any one having approached close to the wall. The track, if it really is one, doesn’t appear to go beyond the tomb."
"That is what it looks like to me," agreed Woodburn, "though I am hanged if I can see any reason why it should. They couldn’t have jumped from the top of the tomb over the wall."
"It looks," I suggested, "as if this place had been used rather as a post of observation, or a lurking-place where the sportsman could keep out of sight until the coast was clear." We approached the tomb from the direction of the wall and sauntered round it, idly reading the inscriptions, which recorded briefly the life-histories of a whole dynasty of Greenlees, "late of Hartsden Manor in this Parish," beginning with one John Greenlees who died in 1611. At length he turned away and began to retrace his steps down the path towards the gate.
"They were a turbulent family, these Greenlees," said Woodburn. "Always in hot water. Bigoted Papists in early days, and, of course, Jacobites after the Revolution. From what I have heard, Hartsden Manor House must have seen some stirring times."
While he was speaking, I was glancing through the inscriptions on the back of the tomb. Happening to look down, I noticed a match in the grass at my feet, and stooped to pick it up. As I did so, I observed another; on which I made a search and ultimately salved no less than six.
"What have you found, Jervis?" Thorndyke asked, as I rose.
I held out my hand with the six matches in it. "All from the same place at the back of the tomb," said I. "What do you make of that?"
"It might mean five failures on a windy day or night," he replied, "or six separate cigarettes; and the operator may have come here to get a ‘lee side,’ or he may have got behind the tomb so that the light should not be seen from the road. But we must not let our imaginations run away with us. There is nothing to show that the person or persons who came to this tomb have any connection with our problem. We are looking for some means of access to the gallery, and, up to the present, we have not found any. The fact, if it were one, that some persons had been lurking about here, waiting for a chance to enter, wouldn’t help us. It would not tell us how they got in; which is what we want to know."
Nevertheless, he continued, for some time, to browse round the tomb, dividing his attention between the inscriptions and the grass that bordered the low plinth.
"Well," said Woodburn, "we seem to have exhausted the possibilities, unless there is anything else that you want to see."
"No," replied Thorndyke, "I don’t think it is of any use to prolong our search. I suspect that there is some way into the house; but, if there is, it is too well hidden to be discoverable without some guiding hint, which we haven’t got. So the answer to our first question is negative, and we must concentrate on the second—does anyone, in fact, effect an entrance to the gallery?"
"And how do you propose to solve that problem?" enquired Woodburn.
"I propose to install an automatic recorder which will give us a series of photographs of the interior of the room."
"And catch ‘em on the hop, eh?" said Woodburn. "But it doesn’t seem possible. Why, you would have to take a photograph every few minutes; and then you wouldn’t bring it off, because the beggars seem to come only at night."
"I am not expecting to get photographs of the visitors themselves," Thorndyke explained. "My idea is that, if any persons do frequent those rooms, they will almost certainly leave some traces of their visits. Even the moving of a chair would be conclusive evidence, if it could be proved, as it could be by the comparison of two photographs which showed it in different positions. I shall send my assistant, Mr. Polton, down to set up the apparatus, and perhaps you will give Mrs. Gibbins instructions to give him all necessary facilities, including the means of locking up the corridor when he has fixed the apparatus and set it going."
To this Mr. Woodburn agreed, gleefully, and, as a train was due in a quarter of an hour, we embarked in his car without re-entering the house.
XII. THE UNKNOWN COINER
From Charing Cross we walked home to the Temple, entering it by way of Pump Court and the Cloisters. As we were about to cross King’s Bench Walk, I glanced up at the laboratory window, and caught a momentary glimpse of Polton’s head, which, however, vanished even as I looked; and, when we arrived at our landing, the door of our chambers was open, and he was visible within, making a hypocritical pretence of laying the dinner-table, which had obviously been laid hours previously. But his pretended occupation did not conceal the fact that he was in a twitter of anxiety and impatience, which Thorndyke proceeded at once humanely to allay.
"It had to be a cold dinner, as I didn’t know what time you would be home," Polton explained; but Thorndyke cut short his explanations and came to the essential matter.
"Never mind the dinner, Polton," said he. "The important point is that your automatic watcher will be wanted, and as soon as you can get it ready."
Polton beamed delightedly on his employer as he replied:
"It is ready now, sir, all except the objective. You see, the clock and the camera were really made already. They only wanted a little adaptation. And I have made an experimental objective, and done some trial exposures with it. So I am ready to go ahead as soon as I have the dimensions of the keyhole."
"I can give you those at once," said Thorndyke, opening the research case and taking out the wooden cylinders. "The keyhole will take a half-inch tube fairly easily."
Polton slapped his thigh joyfully. "There’s a stroke of luck!" he exclaimed. "You said it would be about half an inch, so I used a half-inch tube for my experimental objective. But I never dared to hope that it would be the exact size. As it is, all I have got to do is to fix it on to the camera. I can do that tonight and give it a final trial. Then it will be ready to set up in place to-morrow. Perhaps, sir, you will come up presently and see if you think it will do. I shall have got it fixed by the time you have finished dinner."
With this, having taken a last glance at the table, he retired in triumph, with the box of cylinders in his hand.
"What is this ‘automatic watcher’?" I asked, as we sat down to our meal. "I assume that it is some sort of automatic camera. But what is its special peculiarity?"
"In its original form," replied Thorndyke, "it consisted of a clock of the kind known as an English Dial, with a magazine camera fixed inside it. There was a simplified striking movement which released the shutter at any intervals previously arranged. It also had an arrangement for recording the time at which each exposure was made. It was quite a valuable appliance for keeping a watch on any particular place. It could be set up, for instance, opposite the door of a strong room or in any similar position."
"But suppose the thief made his visit in the interval between two exposures?"
"That was provided for by a special attachment whereby the opening of the door was made to break an electric circuit and release the shutter. So that whenever the door was opened an exposure was made and the time recorded. But, for our present purpose, although we have retained the principle, we have had to modify the details considerably. For instance, we have separated the clock from the camera, so that it can be fixed far enough away from the door to prevent its tick from being heard in the gallery. The releasing mechanism of the clock is connected with an electromagnet in the camera which actuates the shutter and the film roller. The lens is in a tube five inches long, with a reflecting prism at the farther end, which will, of course, be passed through the keyhole, and the camera screwed on to the door. That is a rough sketch of the apparatus. You will see the details of it when we go up to make our inspection."
"And how often do you propose to make an exposure?" I asked.
"One exposure every twenty-four hours would do for us," he replied, "as we merely want a daily record of the positions of the various objects in the room. But that does not satisfy Polton. He would like an exposure every hour. So we have arrived at a compromise. There will be an exposure every six hours. Of course, those made at night will show nothing, and both of those made in daylight, when the room will be unoccupied, will, presumably, be alike. But I can see that Polton will not be happy if there is not a good string of exposures."
Dr. Thorndyke Omnibus Vol 6 Page 18