He worked quickly and efficiently, moving with a sure step and a devil’s purpose. As he crossed the room to an antique chest of drawers, his shadow, cast by the fire, was like a great monster on the wall and ceiling. And how true that shadow was! For no matter how much this figure resembled a normal man, his soul was that of a demon from hell.
He shifted the chest from the wall, and half-dragged, half-carried it to the side of the fine antique four-poster bed, with its solidly made oak canopy, so exquisitely carved. Leaping on to the chest, he was able to reach right over the top of the canopy, at the head of the bed. A swift, careful scrutiny, and he saw that the heavy framework was securely held in position by a slot device.
It needed an iron nerve and great strength for the next move. With a slow, gradual heave, his shoulder beneath the underside of the great fixture, he raised it clear of the slots—and then allowed it to come to rest again. But now it was so placed that the smallest jar of the bed would bring it crashing down. So delicately was the balance adjusted that the intruder himself, in getting down, did so with extreme caution—lest his very movements should cause premature collapse.
He was even more cautious in shifting the chest back to its original position. Having done this, he moved away from the fire, where he stood, a shadowy figure in the gloom. He was breathing hard from his exertions, but he gave himself only a moment’s rest. He padded across to the big bay window. Here, overhead, just in front of the dressing table, hung the main electric light of the room. Reaching up, the intruder sharply tapped the electric bulb—once, twice, three times. The jarring was sufficient to break the delicate filament and render the lamp useless. So much more subtle than removing the lamp from its socket, or tampering with the switch. So much safer—for it left no evidence.
He crept to the door and silently pressed the switch down. No result. The lamp was dead. He turned his head and gazed at the bed, so solid looking and massive. At the head of the bed, in the very centre, hung a length of flex, with a switch at the end.
‘It can’t miss!’ muttered the intruder.
It was, indeed, a subtle and ingenious trick. Cromwell, coming into the bedroom to dress for dinner, and finding the main light out of action, would naturally turn to the bedside lights, both of which were operated by the central hanging switch. It was a very wide bed—in fact, enormous, as judged by the standard of modern beds. In order to reach that switch, Ironsides would be compelled to reach over… and lean against the side of the bed… and kneel on the bed…
VII. The Invisible Clue
When Bill Cromwell and Johnny reached the great terrace in front of the castle they found a gang of young men and girls, fresh from their winter sports, collected in a semi-circle on the wide steps, lustily bawling a Christmas carol. It was not a particularly pleasant sight, and Ironsides viewed the scene distastefully.
‘Don’t you like carols?’ grinned Johnny.
‘As a matter of fact, I’m rather partial to a well-sung Christmas carol,’ replied Ironsides. ‘But if you think I’m going to admire this yowling, caterwauling mob of half-wits, you’d better think again! Why don’t you join ’em, Johnny? Just about your stamp.’
‘Thanks,’ said Johnny, ‘for nothing.’
He was forced to admit that the carol singing, as carol singing, was both poor and unmelodious, and especially unmelodious.
‘I wonder,’ bawled Cromwell, ‘if I can be permitted to pass?’
There was a shout of laughter, and the roisterers parted with mock bows, and opened up a lane.
‘Only our fun, Mr. Cromwell,’ grinned Phil Bayle, who was much in evidence. ‘But this is only just the beginning. Wait until we get properly worked up after dinner.’
‘Whoopee!’ cried some of the girls.
‘Whoopee with knobs on,’ sang out another young man. ‘Dancing—games—charades—and tons of fun. We’ll make this old castle burst its sides before we’ve finished.’
‘And Mr. Cromwell’s going to join in, too,’ said one of the young ladies, linking her arm in Ironsides’ and looking saucily into his eyes. ‘Are you any good at games, Mr. Cromwell? I like the creepy ones. Last Christmas we played a marvellous game called “Dead Man” or “Murder” or something…’
‘No, confound it, not that!’ interrupted young Bayle, losing all his boisterous good humour.
He looked so pale and shaken that much of the laughter died down, and Johnny saw that Ironsides was looking at Philip Bayle with more than passing interest.
‘Don’t you like the parlour game of “Murder,” Mr. Bayle?’ he murmured gently.
‘No, I’m damned if I do,’ replied Bayle. ‘I played it once, years ago…’ He paused awkwardly. ‘I wasn’t scared, but two of the girls in the party—mere youngsters—had fits of hysterics that lasted for hours. I think those sort of games are rotten.’
‘Mr. Bayle,’ said Ironsides, ‘I’m with you.’
And he passed indoors without another word. He and Johnny walked upstairs together, and when they reached Cromwell’s door, Johnny paused before going to his own bedroom.
‘Rather funny, that “murder game” incident,’ he remarked. ‘You saw how the Bayle bloke went ashen about the gills? I’m beginning to wonder…’
‘Don’t,’ interrupted Cromwell sourly. ‘You’re bound to be wrong.’
And, leaving Johnny flat, he went into his bedroom and shut the door. The firelight flickered cheerfully. He clicked the light switch, and nothing happened. He clicked it again, and glanced over at the hanging light, with its modern shade, by the dressing-table. The fault was obviously local, since the corridor was a perfect blaze of happy, cheerful light.
‘Why,’ asked Cromwell bitterly, ‘should my light, of all lights, be the one to give up the ghost?’
He remembered the bedside lights, and moved in that direction. It was an instinctive act. Every step he took was a step nearer to—death. But his subconscious mind was already putting in some fast work. Why, indeed, should it be his light to fail? Beneath Ironsides’ matter-of-fact, sleepy exterior, his senses were acute with a razor-edged fineness. They had been so all the afternoon, and nobody—not even Johnny Lister—had guessed that Cromwell had been putting on a brilliant act. For the shaggy, long-legged Yard man was well aware of the hideous dangers that lurked in this old castle.
Ordinarily, perhaps, he would have thought nothing of the light failure—until it was too late. But this evening he was ready for any kind of trouble. He was half expecting trouble. In the privacy of his own room it was no longer necessary to maintain his pose, and he shed it like a cloak, standing revealed as eleven-stone-nine-pounds of human electricity.
‘By God!’ murmured Bill Cromwell.
Half-way to the bed he stood as though powerful magnets had fastened him to the floor. Never in his career had he so much resembled a shaggy, ungainly bloodhound; for his sensitive nostrils were twitching visibly as he sniffed at the air. He detected a faint, illusory odour—so vague, so transient that at times it nearly eluded him. But it was there, in the room, and he recognized it. And, recognizing it, his muscles stiffened and his eyes grew as hard as frozen flint.
Ironsides had got hold of his first real clue—and it was an invisible clue. A clue that drifted in the warm atmosphere of this age-old bedroom.
‘The light,’ whispered Cromwell shrewdly. ‘I find the light out of commission, and I walk across to the bed and reach over for the hanging switch. In reaching over, I lean against the bed and shake it… Pretty! Devilish pretty!’
He gazed musingly up at the massive canopy, with its sombre hangings, and a cold grip encircled his heart.
‘H’m! Treacherous things, these infernal canopies,’ he observed. ‘I’ve always hated them—always had a horror that they might fall on top of me—like this!’
He reached out a long leg, gave the bed a sharp push, and leaped back. As he did so, he
saw the heavy oaken framework part company with its moorings at the head of the bed, and fall.
Cra-a-a-a-ash—thud!
The noise was not excessive. Just a splintering of wood as the fixture split at the foot of the bed, and the head part fell like a ton of bricks on to the pillows. The thing fell with appalling force, and Ironsides knew that if he had been reaching for the switch at that crucial second, the heavy wooden bar would have crushed his head in like an eggshell.
And then, the tension over, he thought of—Johnny. His face twitched slightly, and his jaw came together until his lips set in a thin, hard line. In three long strides he was at the door. He went out, shut the door, locked it, and in a couple of seconds he was with Johnny—who was half undressed.
‘Here, I say, dash it… Oh, it’s you, Old Iron,’ said Johnny. ‘Why the devil can’t you knock when you come into a chap’s room? I was thinking of what you said about the girls…’
‘Forget the girls,’ interrupted Ironsides, in so strained a voice that Johnny stood stock still. ‘H’m! Everything seems to be all right here. The killer has come to the conclusion that you’re not worth bothering about.’
‘If you’ll cease talking hokus bolonus, and tell me what the hell you mean, I shall be somewhat obliged,’ said Johnny, drawing on a pair of evening dress trousers with creases that could have been used to carve a joint. ‘Damn it, Ironsides, you look shaken. I didn’t know you could be shaken. What’s happened?’
‘Nothing, you blithering idiot!’ replied Ironsides. ‘Can’t you see I’m still alive? But I shouldn’t have been alive if I had walked into the ingenious trap our mutual pal laid for me. The general scheme was to drop several tons of weight on my head and expose my brains to view.’
‘A thing which simply couldn’t be done,’ said Johnny promptly.
But he ceased to be facetious after Ironsides had briefly explained.
‘Hell’s bells! This is getting a bit thick,’ he commented, and then started. ‘What was that crack you made when you first came in? So I’m not worth bothering about? Rats! The blighter’s obviously saving me up for the next reel.’
‘Don’t bother to finish dressing,’ said Cromwell. ‘I want you to come back with me to my room—and help me to put that canopy to rights. Somebody in this house-party thinks I’m dead by this time, and I shall be interested in certain faces when I walk downstairs in one piece.’
They hurried out, but before they reached the next bedroom, Cromwell paused. His super-sensitive wits were at work again. He had heard a faint crackle of ice on the path, below, and he stepped quickly to the window. It was freezing sharply outside, and he knew that this particular window overlooked the path which led to the ruined chapel—and it was a path that had been cleared of snow during the afternoon. The fragments of snow left on the crazy paving of the path were as brittle as glass.
Shading his face with both hands he peered out into the darkness. And down there, on the chapel path, he saw a shadowy, stealthily moving shape.
‘By God! I didn’t expect… Quick, Johnny! Come with me.’
‘Hang it, I haven’t got a collar on…’
‘Blast your collar! Come!’
Ironsides grabbed Johnny’s arm in a vice-like grip, and whirled him downstairs. It was useless for Johnny to protest. Luckily, there was nobody in the hall, for all the guests were dressing for dinner and there were no servants about at the moment. Johnny was glad when he reached the shadows of the south corridor.
They went through the Death Room like a gale, and Ironsides took out the great key of the metal-studded door and turned it. They ran down the steps and a moment later they were in the crypt.
‘Hold this!’ snapped Cromwell.
Johnny held it—the electric torch. Cromwell heaved at the heavy lid of Lady Julia’s casket—and cursed. The body of the unknown man had gone.
‘But where?’ ejaculated Johnny, in startled astonishment. ‘How the dickens was the body taken through the house without anybody seeing?’
‘Through the house, nothing!’ snapped Ironsides, swinging round to the stone door that gave on to the ruined chapel. ‘I thought I felt a draught! The door’s not even fastened. Quick, Johnny. He’s only been gone a minute—perhaps less.’
Johnny was bewildered as Cromwell pulled the heavy door open, and they went out into the keen air of the frosty evening.
‘Hey, where’s all that blinking snow?’
‘Why do you suppose I was sleeping most of the afternoon?’ retorted Cromwell tartly. ‘Because I had done the brainwork, and others were doing the manual labour. If you hadn’t been late for lunch you would have heard your father stating to the company in general—at my suggestion—that he was going to have the path leading from the castle to the lake cleared of snow. He had hinted that there might be good skating to-morrow. And everybody more or less cheered.’
‘You wily old…’
‘Cut the compliments, and keep your voice down,’ warned Ironsides. ‘The men, in clearing the path, took a short cut through the chapel ruins, and it seemed quite natural that they should heave the snow away from the crypt door. A little trap of mine, if only you had the sense to see it.’
‘Ironsides, old thing, you’re priceless,’ murmured Johnny admiringly. ‘I get it now. A temptation to the killer to get the body out and duly deposit it on the lake, as per the original script.’
‘Exactly,’ said Cromwell, as they cautiously advanced along the cleared path between piled masses of snow. ‘But I didn’t expect the blighter to act until the middle of the night. He’s in a panic, my lad; he wouldn’t have monkeyed with my bed if he hadn’t been in a panic. He’s found out that I know something, and his idea was to ensure that I met with an unfortunate “accident” so that he could do his body removing without fear of interruption. But the fool has overreached himself, as most murderers do, and we’ve got him.’
As he spoke, he pointed. They had turned a bend of the path, and here it sloped slightly, the surface treacherous under their feet; and right ahead they could see the wide expanse of the snow-covered lake, shadowed, on the farther side, by a belt of tall trees. And on the lake, vaguely visible against the background of white, a strange, shapeless figure was moving.
Johnny felt his heart pumping painfully. There was something so grotesque, so monstrous about that figure that his usually steady nerve was shaken. Then he drew in his breath with a little gulp of relief, and felt sheepish. The dark figure looked monstrous because he was carrying a heavy, bulky burden across his shoulders. And even as Ironsides and Johnny slithered down to the edge of the lake, the unknown dropped his grisly parcel on to the ice.
‘Better leave this to me!’ whispered Cromwell grimly. ‘He’ll probably be dangerous. See that hole in the ice? He must have made it in advance. He knows that it’ll be frozen over again by the morning… Hey, you!’
Cromwell uttered the last two words in a voice of loud command, and at the same moment he switched on his electric torch and flashed it out upon the figure on the frozen lake. The man turned, startled and dumbfounded by that unexpected shout, and the backward step he took was quite involuntary. Also it was fatal.
The body was lying on the edge of the broken hole in the ice, and the living man’s weight, suddenly added to that of the dead man, proved too much for the ice. There was a splintering crash, a wild shriek of indescribable horror, and the living and the dead plunged into the black water.
And for a moment, a moment that would be photographed in Johnny Lister’s mind for years, the light of Ironsides’ torch lit up the face that slid beneath the troubled surface; and it was the face of Dr. Spencer Ware!
VIII. Ironsides Pounces
‘Hell and damnation!’ swore Cromwell angrily.
He ran with long strides over the ice, but put the brake on with caution as he approached the jagged hole. The torchlight showed a turbulent dist
urbance of the black water—and some bubbles. But Dr. Spencer Ware had vanished for ever from this life.
‘Can’t we do something, Old Iron?’ asked Johnny, horrified. ‘Damn it, he only plunged in a moment ago. He’s bound to come up…’
‘He’ll never come up—until we fish him up with grappling irons!’
‘But that’s crazy…’
‘Would you come up, if you sank into a deep lake with your pockets filled with heavy weights?’ interrupted Cromwell grimly. ‘Can’t you see how it happened? Ware laid the body at the edge of the hole, ready for him to attach the weights. Probably a few big stones; quite sufficient to keep any dead body down. Quite sufficient, by the same token, to keep a live body down in icy-cold water. When the ice broke, Ware plunged straight down, and he stayed down. There’s nothing we can do.’
It was horrible, but true. In spite of the shudder that rippled through Johnny’s frame, he could not help seeing that there was poetic justice in this accident. The murderer had been carried into Eternity with his victim.
‘You know,’ muttered Johnny slowly, ‘I had half an idea that Ware was guilty. It seemed a bit fishy to me, the way he doped Ronnie Charton with drugs. He was a bit hasty, too, in hinting that Ronnie had gone loony. What’s behind it, Ironsides? Why did Dr. Ware kill one man, and try to drive another out of his senses?’
‘We’d better get away from here,’ said Cromwell, ignoring the questions. ‘The sooner we can tell your father about this infernal business, the better. No time like the present. Everybody is still upstairs.’
They hurried back to the castle, and Johnny was glad enough to get away from the lake. The water in that jagged hole had ceased to ripple, and it told its own story.
Passing through the Death Room, they crossed the great hall, with its bright lights and gay decorations, and mounted the stairs. On the landing they encountered Gerry Charton, resplendent in evening dress. He started like a frightened horse as he caught sight of the pair.
‘Great Scott! What are you walking about like that for, Lister?’ he ejaculated. ‘Do you know that you’re collarless and that your hair is all ruffled? Has something happened?’
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