"He brought some of it with him, sir," said Polton, who had been pulling out the drawers of a nest and peering in with a school-boy’s delight in a treasure-hunt. "Here is a piece of fine gold plate—twenty-four carats—which certainly came from a bullion dealer’s."
At this report, Thorndyke, who had hitherto maintained the attitude of a mildly interested observer, suddenly woke up. Taking a pair of pliers from the bench, he went to the drawer which Polton was holding open and carefully lifted out the piece of plate. Having scrutinized it closely on both sides, he held it out for Miller’s inspection.
"You had better secure this," said he. "There are some fairly clear finger-prints on it which may be helpful later on, if our friend should fail to keep his appointment to-night."
The Superintendent took the pliers from him, and examined the gold plate, but with less enthusiasm than I should have expected. However, he laid it carefully on a shelf of the cupboard, and then returned to the quest in which he appeared to be specially interested. By this time Polton had made some further discoveries that seemed more relevant, one of which he announced by pulling a drawer out bodily and placing it on the bench.
"Sovereigns, by gosh!" exclaimed Miller, as he looked into the drawer. "Now, I wonder whether these are some of the castings, or the originals that he worked from. What do you think, Doctor?"
Thorndyke picked out one of the coins and examined its edge through his lens, turning it round and inspecting the whole circumference.
"I should say that this is certainly genuine," he reported. "There is no trace of the edge tool. The milling is quite perfect, and it seems to show slight traces of wear. Moreover, the number—there are about two dozen in the drawer—is not more than would be required as models to avoid repetition of a particular coin."
"Yes, I expect you are right," said Miller, "but they will know at the Mint, in any case. Ah!" he exclaimed, as Polton laid another drawer on the bench. "This looks more interesting. No bullion dealer’s stuff this time, I fancy."
The drawer contained about a dozen small ingots of gold, each marked by means of a punch with a number—presumably the carats of "fineness." One of these Miller took up and held out for Polton’s inspection.
"No, sir," said the latter, "that did not come from a dealer. It was cast in that ingot mould on the shelf, there."
As he spoke, he took the mould down from the shell and slipped the ingot into it, when it was seen to fit with quite convincing accuracy.
The Superintendent regarded it with profound attention for some moments. Suddenly he turned to Polton and asked impressively:
"I want you to tell me, Mr. Polton, which of these things might have been brought here by an outsider and which must have been put here by Mr. Toke. There is this gold plate. That must have been brought here. But what was it brought for?"
"To melt down with these ingots," replied Polton, "to bring the gold up to 22 carats. The ingots are all 18 carats or less."
"But why couldn’t he have used that acid process that you spoke of?"
"Because he would have had to cut up the ingots and hammer the pieces out thin on the stake. But, if he had done that at night, they’d have heard him all over the house. Besides, the fine gold plate would be quicker and less trouble, and it would come to the same thing. He would get his money back. As to what you were asking, I should say that the whole out-fit of this place must have been put here by Mr. Toke. The furnace certainly was, and the crucibles and ingot moulds seem to belong to it; in fact, it is a regular metal-worker’s shop."
"And what do you make of those ingots?"
Polton crinkled knowingly. "I think, sir," he answered, "they are more in your line than mine. They are not trade ingots, but they are about the fineness of good-class jewellery."
At this point, Thorndyke, who had been listening with rather detached interest to this discussion, sauntered out into the gallery, leaving Polton and Miller to their devices.
"I think," said he, as I followed him out, "we had better get on with our own job. This coining business is no concern of ours."
With this, he went along to the entrance door, on the steps of which he had left his research case, and, picking it up, carried it back to the table and deposited it thereon.
"We may as well begin with the most obvious probabilities," said he, as he opened the case and ran his eye over the contents. "I suppose you noticed this end of the room, as it showed in the photograph?"
I had to admit that I had not taken especial note of it, nor did I now perceive anything particularly striking in its appearance. The end wall was decorated pleasantly enough, by a low elliptical arch of simply moulded oak supported by a pair of oaken pilasters, the surfaces of which were enriched with shallow strap carving in the form of a guilloche with small rosettes in the spaces. There was nothing remarkable about it; and, to tell the truth, I was not quite clear as to what I was expected to see. And Thorndyke’s proceedings enlightened me not at all.
"The police methods are good enough for our present purpose," he remarked, as he took out a wide-mouthed bottle and a large camel-hair brush. "The good old Hyd. cunsseta."
Removing the stopper from the bottle, he picked up the latter and the brush, and walked across to the pilaster nearest the window. Dipping the brush into the bottle of powder, he began to paint it lightly over the carved surface. I watched him with slightly bewildered curiosity; and, looking through the door way into the workshop, where I noticed Woodburn listening with an anxious and rather disapproving expression to the comments of our assistant and the Superintendent, I perceived that the two latter had developed a sudden interest in my colleague’s activities. Presently Miller came out for a closer inspection.
"I thought you always used a powder-spray," he remarked. "And you needn’t worry about finger-prints. Those on the gold plate will tell us all we want to know. And," he added in a lower tone, "let me give you a hint. Your nocturnal stranger is a myth. The name of the chappie who runs the sovereign factory is Toke. Mustn’t say so before Woodburn, but it’s a fact. It stares you in the face. Mr. Toke is a fence. Dam’ clever fence, too. Buys the scrap from the jewel-robbers, sells the stones, and melts down the settings into sovereigns. I take my hat off to him, and I only hope he’ll turn up to-night and let me have the pleasure of making his acquaintance."
Thorndyke nodded, but continued to brush the grey powder on to the woodwork in a broad band from near the floor to a little above the eye level. The Superintendent watched him with a slightly anxious expression, and presently resumed: "I don’t see why you are so keen on finger-prints, all of a sudden, or why you should expect to find them in this particulars and rather unlikely, place. At any rate, there don’t seem to be any."
"No," said Thorndyke, "we seem to have drawn a blank. Let us try the other side."
He crossed the room and began operations on the second pilaster, watched, not only by Miller, but also by Polton and Woodburn. But this time he did not draw a blank, for, at the first sweep of the brush, the pale-grey of the powder was interrupted by a number of oval shapes, forming an irregular, crowded group close to one side of the pilaster about four feet above the floor. Thorndyke blew away the superfluous powder and examined the group of finger-prints closely. It seemed to be divided into two subgroups, one on the extreme edge of the pilaster and extending round to the side, and the other in the space of one member of the guilloche, around and over the enclosed rosette. After another close inspection, Thorndyke grasped the marked rosette between his fingers and thumb, and tried if it were possible to rotate it. Apparently it turned quite easily; but, beyond the rotation, no result followed. After a moment’s reflection, Thorndyke took a fresh hold, and gave it another turn in the same direction. Suddenly, from within, came a soft click; and then the whole shaft of the pilaster, from the capital to the plinth, swung out a couple of inches like an absurdly tall and narrow door. Thorndyke grasped it by the edge and drew it fully, open, when there came into view a small triangular space o
f floor and a low, narrow opening at the side, with the beginning of a flight of ladder-like steps, the remainder of which was lost to view in the impenetrable darkness of a passage which seemed to burrow into the substance of the wall.
"Well, I’m jiggered!" exclaimed Miller. "Now, I wonder how you guessed that door was there, Doctor?"
"I only guessed that it might be there," said Thorndyke. "Hence the search for finger-prints. Without them, we might have spent hours trying to find the secret door, and especially the fastening, which was so cleverly concealed. However, we have solved the most difficult part of our problem. The outside opening of this passage is probably as cleverly hidden as the inside one. But it will be hidden from without, whereas we shall approach it from within, where there is probably no concealment."
"I suppose it is worthwhile to explore that passage," said Miller, looking a little distastefully at the narrow, black chink, "though, really, we want to know who the man is, not how he got in."
"Perhaps," replied Thorndyke, "an exploration of the passage may answer both questions. At any rate, Mr. Woodburn will want to know how the house was entered from the outside."
"Certainly," Woodburn agreed. "That was, in fact, what we came to find out."
As Thorndyke produced from his case a couple of powerful electric inspection lamps, one of which he handed to me, I reflected on his slightly cryptic answer to the Superintendent’s question; as also did Miller himself. At least, so I judged from the inquisitive look that he cast at Thorndyke. But he made no remark; and, when he had provided himself with an electric lantern from his bag, he announced that he was ready for the exploration.
Thereupon, Thorndyke turned on his lamp, and, squeezing through the narrow opening, began to descend the steps, followed, at due intervals, by the rest of the expeditionary party.
XVI: THE VAULT
In the course of my descent of that interminable stairway, I found myself speculating curiously on the physical characteristics of the dead and gone Greenlees. They must, I decided, have been a thin family; for, surely, no corpulent person, no matter how hard pressed or how deeply embroiled in political machinations, could ever have got down those steps. Vainly did I seek to avoid contact with those slimy, fungus-encrusted walls. They pressed in on me from either side as if I had been sliding down a tube. Not, indeed, that this close contact was without its compensations, for, since there was no hand-rail, and the steps were incredibly steep and narrow, and, like the walls, slippery with slime and fungus, it gave some slight feeling of security.
But it was a hideous experience. Soon the faint glimmer of daylight from the doorway above faded out and gave place to the ghostly light of the electric lamps, which glanced off the shiny, unsavoury walls and ceiling in fitful gleams that dazzled rather than illuminated. Moreover, the air, which at first had seemed only musty and close, grew more and more foul, and pervaded by a strange, cadaverous odour unlike the usual earthiness of underground cellars and passages.
At length, the sudden eclipse of Thorndyke’s lamp, followed by that of Miller’s, and a faint reflection on the wall, told me that they had turned into some other passage. Then I, bringing up the rear, reached the bottom of that apparently endless flight, and found myself on a small paved space from which opened a low tunnel along which my predecessors were creeping in postures more suited to chimpanzees than to representatives of the law. I lowered my head and shoulders and followed, concentrating my attention on avoiding contact with the unclean ceiling. Presently Miller’s voice came rumbling unnaturally along the tube-like passage.
"What does your compass say, Doctor? Which way are we travelling?"
"Due west," was the reply. "Towards the church." I had hardly time to consider the significance of this piece of information when the Superintendent’s voice again rang out, this time in a slightly startled tone:
"Why, this is a vault!"
A few moments more, and I was able to confirm the statement. The tunnel ended in a narrow, oblong chamber, barely three feet wide, but more than a dozen feet long, and of a height that, at least, allowed one to stand upright. I availed myself of this advantage, and looked around me with some curiosity and a strong desire to find the way out. For, if the air had been foul on the stairs and in the tunnel, it was here suffocatingly fetid.
The light of the three powerful lamps made it easily possible to see all the details of structure and arrangement. And a strange and gruesome place it looked in that lurid illumination; a long, passage-like chamber, as I have said, paved with stone and enclosed with walls of damp and slimy brick. At the ends, the walls were solid, excepting the arched opening of the tunnel, but the long side walls were each interrupted by a widish arch which opened into a side chamber. Both chambers were fitted with massive stone shelves, something like the bins of a wine-cellar, and on these could be seen the ends of the coffins containing, presumably, mature specimens of the Greenlees vintage. Above, at a height of about ten feet, the long walls supported what looked like a bottomless brickwork box about eight feet long, the rest of the chamber being roofed in with stone slabs. Under the box, towards one end, a thick iron bar—or what would nowadays be called a girder—crossed the chamber and supported at its middle an upright iron post that seemed to be fixed into the top of the box.
But the feature that interested me most was a flight of steep and narrow, but perfectly practicable, brick steps, which started from the mouth of the tunnel and passed up the left-hand wall above the arch to the base of the box near the end opposite to that which was crossed by the iron bar.
"I don’t quite understand that contraption up there," said Miller, throwing the light of his lantern on the under-side of the box, "but there’s a flight of steps, so I suppose there’s a way out; and I propose that we try it without delay. The atmosphere of this place is enough to stifle a pole-cat."
"We mustn’t be precipitate, Miller," said Thorndyke. "We want to find the way out, but we don’t want to publish it to the world at large. Before we go out, we must send someone up to see that the coast is clear."
"I suppose we shall be able to get out," said Woodburn, "though I don’t see very clearly how we are going to do it. But I expect you do, as you nosed out that doorway so readily."
"I think it is pretty obvious," replied Thorndyke. "That coffer-like structure up there I take to be the Greenlees tomb in the churchyard. The top slab seems to rotate on that iron pivot and those curved runners that cross on the under-side. But I will run up and make sure of it before we send out our scouts."
He climbed cautiously up the brick steps, and having reached the top, threw the light of his lamp on the under-side of the slab and examined the simple mechanism.
"Yes," he reported, "I think it is all plain sailing. The runners are clean and smooth, and both they and the pivot have been kept well oiled. It won’t do to try it, in case there should be anyone in the churchyard. Now, who is going up as scout? I suggest that you go, Woodburn, as you know the tomb; and the Superintendent had better go with you to learn the lie of the land. Take a stick with you, and, if it is all clear, give five distinct taps on the side of the tomb; and be careful not to leave any more tracks than you can help."
Neither of the scouts showed any reluctance. On the contrary, they both assented with a readiness that I attributed to the influence of the deceased Greenlees. At any rate, they waited for no further instructions, but dived forthwith into the tunnel, whence presently came the echoes of their footsteps as they scrambled up the steps towards the fresh air and the light of day.
As they disappeared, Thorndyke began a systematic exploration of the vault, throwing the light of the lamp into all the darker corners and finally extending his researches into the side chambers.
"Isn’t it rather odd," said I, "that the air of this place should be so extraordinarily foul? I take it that there have been no recent burials here."
"If the inscriptions are to be accepted," he replied, "the last burial took place more than sixty years ago.
I agree with you that the physical conditions do not seem to be quite consistent with the inscriptions. Perhaps we may find some explanation."
He walked slowly round the first chamber that he had entered, throwing the light on the shelves and examining, the latter with minute and suspicious scrutiny, reading each of the coffin-plates, and inspecting each coffin critically as to its condition. Having made his round of the first chamber, he crossed to the second, followed by me and Polton—who had developed a profound and ghoulish interest in the investigation. He had passed along nearly the whole length of the first shelf when I saw him stop and look closely, first at the shelf, then at the ground beneath it, and, finally, at the two adjacent coffins.
"This wants looking into, Jervis," said he. "These two coffins have been moved quite recently. The thick dust on the shelf has been brushed away—you can see some of it on the floor—but there are clear traces showing that both coffins have been pulled forward. And, if you look closely at the coffins themselves, you will see pretty evident signs of their having been opened at some fairly recent time. This right-hand one has been opened quite roughly, with inadequate tools. The other has been treated more skilfully; but if you look at the screws you can see that they have been withdrawn and replaced quite recently. Parts of the slots have been scraped bright by the screwdriver and the edges of the slots are burred up, particularly on the left side, showing that they were difficult to turn, as you would expect in the case of an old screw that has been in position for years."
"For what purpose do you suppose the coffins were opened?" I asked.
"‘Why suppose at all?" he replied, "when the coffins are here, and Polton has a whole burglar’s outfit on his person? Let us get the lids off and see what is inside. I take it that the damaged coffin is the one that was opened first, so we will, begin with the other one. Have you a practicable screwdriver about you, Polton?"
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