CHAPTER XXXVII
WHAT WAS HIDDEN UNDER THE FLOOR
The cab pulled up in front of a tumbledown cheap 'villa' in anunfinished cheap neighbourhood,--the whole place a living monument ofthe defeat of the speculative builder.
Atherton leaped out on to the grass-grown rubble which was meant for afootpath.
'I don't see Marjorie looking for me on the doorstep.'
Nor did I,--I saw nothing but what appeared to be an unoccupiedramshackle brick abomination. Suddenly Sydney gave an exclamation.
'Hullo!--The front door's closed!'
I was hard at his heels.
'What do you mean?'
'Why, when I went I left the front door open. It looks as if I've madean idiot of myself after all, and Marjorie's returned,--let's hope togoodness that I have.'
He knocked. While we waited for a response I questioned him.
'Why did you leave the door open when you went?'
'I hardly know,--I imagine that it was with some dim idea of Marjorie'sbeing able to get in if she returned while I was absent,--but the truthis I was in such a condition of helter skelter that I am not preparedto swear that I had any reasonable reason.'
'I suppose there is no doubt that you did leave it open?'
'Absolutely none,--on that I'll stake my life.'
'Was it open when you returned from your pursuit of Holt?'
'Wide open,--I walked straight in expecting to find her waiting for mein the front room,--I was struck all of a heap when I found she wasn'tthere.'
'Were there any signs of a struggle?'
'None,--there were no signs of anything. Everything was just as I hadleft it, with the exception of the ring which I trod on in the passage,and which Lessingham has.'
'If Miss Lindon has returned, it does not look as if she were in thehouse at present.'
It did not,--unless silence had such meaning. Atherton had knockedloudly three times without succeeding in attracting the slightestnotice from within.
'It strikes me that this is another case of seeking admission throughthat hospitable window at the back.'
Atherton led the way to the rear. Lessingham and I followed. There wasnot even an apology for a yard, still less a garden,--there was noteven a fence of any sort, to serve as an enclosure, and to shut off thehouse from the wilderness of waste land. The kitchen window was open. Iasked Sydney if he had left it so.
'I don't know,--I dare say we did; I don't fancy that either of usstood on the order of his coming.'
While he spoke, he scrambled over the sill. We followed. When he wasin, he shouted at the top of his voice,
'Marjorie! Marjorie! Speak to me, Marjorie,--it is I,--Sydney!'
The words echoed through the house. Only silence answered. He led theway to the front room. Suddenly he stopped.
'Hollo!' he cried. 'The blind's down!' I had noticed, when we wereoutside, that the blind was down at the front room window. 'It was upwhen I went, that I'll swear. That someone has been here is prettyplain,--let's hope it's Marjorie.'
He had only taken a step forward into the room when he again stoppedshort to exclaim.
'My stars!--here's a sudden clearance!--Why, the place isempty,--everything's clean gone!'
'What do you mean?--was it furnished when you left?'
The room was empty enough then.
'Furnished?--I don't know that it was exactly what you'd callfurnished,--the party who ran this establishment had a taste inupholstery which was all his own,--but there was a carpet, and a bed,and--and lots of things,--for the most part, I should have said,distinctly Eastern curiosities. They seem to have evaporated intosmoke,--which may be a way which is common enough among Easterncuriosities, though it's queer to me.'
Atherton was staring about him as if he found it difficult to creditthe evidence of his own eyes.
'How long ago is it since you left?'
He referred to his watch.
'Something over an hour,--possibly an hour and a half; I couldn't swearto the exact moment, but it certainly isn't more.'
'Did you notice any signs of packing up?'
'Not a sign.' Going to the window he drew up the blind,--speaking as hedid so. 'The queer thing about this business is that when we first gotin this blind wouldn't draw up a little bit, so, since it wouldn't goup I pulled it down, roller and all, now it draws up as easily andsmoothly as if it had always been the best blind that ever lived.'
Standing at Sydney's back I saw that the cabman on his box wassignalling to us with his outstretched hand. Sydney perceived him too.He threw up the sash.
'What's the matter with you?'
'Excuse me, sir, but who's the old gent?'
'What old gent?'
'Why the old gent peeping through the window of the room upstairs?'
The words were hardly out of the driver's mouth when Sydney was throughthe door and flying up the staircase. I followed rather moresoberly,--his methods were a little too flighty for me. When I reachedthe landing, dashing out of the front room he rushed into the one atthe back,--then through a door at the side. He came out shouting.
'What's the idiot mean!--with his old gent! I'd old gent him if I gothim!--There's not a creature about the place!'
He returned into the front room,--I at his heels. That certainly wasempty,--and not only empty, but it showed no traces of recentoccupation. The dust lay thick upon the floor,--there was that mouldy,earthy smell which is so frequently found in apartments which have beenlong untenanted.
'Are you sure, Atherton, that there is no one at the back?'
'Of course I'm sure,--you can go and see for yourself if you like; doyou think I'm blind? Jehu's drunk.' Throwing up the sash he addressedthe driver. 'What do you mean with your old gent at the window?--whatwindow?'
'That window, sir.'
'Go to!--you're dreaming, man!--there's no one here.'
'Begging your pardon, sir, but there was someone there not a minuteago.'
'Imagination, cabman,--the slant of the light on the glass,--or youreyesight's defective.'
'Excuse me, sir, but it's not my imagination, and my eyesight's as goodas any man's in England,--and as for the slant of the light on theglass, there ain't much glass for the light to slant on. I saw himpeeping through that bottom broken pane on your left hand as plainly asI see you. He must be somewhere about,--he can't have got away,--he'sat the back. Ain't there a cupboard nor nothing where he could hide?'
The cabman's manner was so extremely earnest that I went myself to see.There was a cupboard on the landing, but the door of that stood wideopen, and that obviously was bare. The room behind was small, and,despite the splintered glass in the window frame, stuffy. Fragments ofglass kept company with the dust on the floor, together with a choicecollection of stones, brickbats, and other missiles,--which notimprobably were the cause of their being there. In the corner stood acupboard,--but a momentary examination showed that that was as bare asthe other. The door at the side, which Sydney had left wide open,opened on to a closet, and that was empty. I glanced up,--there was notrap door which led to the roof. No practicable nook or cranny, inwhich a living being could lie concealed, was anywhere at hand.
I returned to Sydney's shoulder to tell the cabman so.
'There is no place in which anyone could hide, and there is no one ineither of the rooms,--you must have been mistaken, driver.'
The man waxed wroth.
'Don't tell me! How could I come to think I saw something when Ididn't?'
'One's eyes are apt to play us tricks;--how could you see what wasn'tthere?'
'That's what I want to know. As I drove up, before you told me to stop,I saw him looking through the window,--the one at which you are. He'dgot his nose glued to the broken pane, and was staring as hard as hecould stare. When I pulled up, off he started,--I saw him get up offhis knees, and go to the back of the room. When the gentleman took toknocking, back he came,--to the same old spot, and flopped down on hisknees. I didn't know what caper you was up
to,--you might be bumbailiffs for all I knew!--and I supposed that he wasn't so anxious tolet you in as you might be to get inside, and that was why he didn'ttake no notice of your knocking, while all the while he kept a eye onwhat was going on. When you goes round to the back, up he gets again,and I reckoned that he was going to meet yer, and perhaps give yer abit of his mind, and that presently I should hear a shindy, or thatsomething would happen. But when you pulls up the blind downstairs, tomy surprise back he come once more. He shoves his old nose rightthrough the smash in the pane, and wags his old head at me like achattering magpie. That didn't seem to me quite the civil thing todo,--I hadn't done no harm to him; so I gives you the office, and letsyou know that he was there. But for you to say that he wasn't there,and never had been,--blimey! that cops the biscuit. If he wasn't there,all I can say is I ain't here, and my 'orse ain't here, and my cabain't neither,--damn it!--the house ain't here, and nothing ain't!'
He settled himself on his perch with an air of the most extreme illusage,--he had been standing up to tell his tale. That the man wasserious was unmistakable. As he himself suggested, what inducementcould he have had to tell a lie like that? That he believed himself tohave seen what he declared he saw was plain. But, on the other hand,what could have become--in the space of fifty seconds!--of his 'oldgent'?
Atherton put a question.
'What did he look like,--this old gent of yours?'
'Well, that I shouldn't hardly like to say. It wasn't much of his faceI could see, only his face and his eyes,--and they wasn't pretty. Hekept a thing over his head all the time, as if he didn't want too muchto be seen.'
'What sort of a thing?'
'Why,--one of them cloak sort of things, like them Arab blokes used towear what used to be at Earl's Court Exhibition,--you know!'
This piece of information seemed to interest my companions more thananything he had said before.
'A burnoose do you mean?'
'How am I to know what the thing's called? I ain't up in foreignlanguages,--'tain't likely! All I know that them Arab blokes what wasat Earl's Court used to walk about in them all over theplace,--sometimes they wore them over their heads, and sometimes theydidn't. In fact if you'd asked me, instead of trying to make out as Isees double, or things what was only inside my own noddle, or somethingor other, I should have said this here old gent what I've been tellingyou about was a Arab bloke,--when he gets off his knees to sneak awayfrom the window, I could see that he had his cloak thing, what was overhis head, wrapped all round him.'
Mr Lessingham turned to me, all quivering with excitement.
'I believe that what he says is true!'
'Then where can this mysterious old gentleman have got to,--can yousuggest an explanation? It is strange, to say the least of it, that thecabman should be the only person to see or hear anything of him.'
'Some devil's trick has been played,--I know it, I feel it!--myinstinct tells me so!'
I stared. In such a matter one hardly expects a man of PaulLessingham's stamp to talk of 'instinct.' Atherton stared too. Then, ona sudden, he burst out,
'By the Lord, I believe the Apostle's right,--the whole place reeks tome of hankey-pankey,--it did as soon as I put my nose inside. Inmatters of prestidigitation, Champnell, we Westerns are among therudiments,--we've everything to learn,--Orientals leave us at the post.If their civilisation's what we're pleased to call extinct, theirconjuring--when you get to know it!--is all alive oh!'
He moved towards the door. As he went he slipped, or seemed to, all butstumbling on to his knees.
'Something tripped me up,--what's this?' He was stamping on the floorwith his foot. 'Here's a board loose. Come and lend me a hand, one ofyou fellows, to get it up. Who knows what mystery's beneath?'
I went to his aid. As he said, a board in the floor was loose. Hisstepping on it unawares had caused his stumble. Together we prised itout of its place,--Lessingham standing by and watching us the while.Having removed it, we peered into the cavity it disclosed.
There was something there.
'Why,' cried Atherton 'it's a woman's clothing!'
The Beetle: A Mystery Page 37