The Secret House

A man stood irresolutely before the imposing portals of Cainbury House, a large office building let out to numerous small tenants, and harbouring, as the indicator on the tiled wall of the vestibule testified, some thirty different professions. The man was evidently poor, for his clothes were shabby and his boots were down at heel. He was as evidently a foreigner. His clean-shaven eagle face was sallow, his eyes were dark, his eyebrows black and straight.

He passed up the few steps into the hall and stood thoughtfully before the indicator. Presently he found what he wanted. At the very top of the list and amongst the crowded denizens of the fifth floor was a slip inscribed:

“The Gossip’s Corner”

He took from his waistcoat pocket a newspaper cutting and compared the two then stepped briskly, almost jauntily, into the hall, as though all his doubts and uncertainties had vanished, and waited for the elevator. His coat was buttoned tightly, his collar was frayed, his shirt had seen the greater part of a week’s service, the Derby hat on his head had undergone extensive renovations, and a close observer would have noticed that his gloves were odd ones.

He walked into the lift and said, “Fifth floor,” with a slight foreign accent.

He was whirled up, the lift doors clanged open and the grimy finger of the elevator boy indicated the office. Again the man hesitated, examining the door carefully. The upper half was of toughened glass and bore the simple inscription:

“The Gossip’s Corner. Knock.”

Obediently the stranger knocked and the door opened through an invisible agent, much to the man’s surprise, though there was nothing more magical about the phenomenon than there is about any electrically controlled office door.

“Assassin!”

This was the cry which rang out in the stillness of the night, and aroused the interest of one inhabitant of Brakely Square who was awake. Mr. Gregory Farrington, a victim of insomnia, heard the sound, and put down the book he was reading, with a frown. He rose from his easy chair, pulled his velvet dressing gown lightly round his rotund form and shuffled to the window. His blinds were lowered, but these were of the ordinary type, and he stuck two fingers between two of the laths.

There was a moist film on the window through which the street lamps showed blurred and indistinct, and he rubbed the pane clear with the tips of his fingers (he described every action to T. B. Smith afterwards).

Two men stood outside the house. They occupied the centre of the deserted pavement, and they were talking excitedly. Through the closed window Mr. Farrington could hear the staccato rattle of their voices, and by the gesticulations, familiar to one who had lived for many years in a Latin country, he gathered that they were of that breed.

He saw one raise his hand to strike the other and caught the flash of a pistol-barrel excitedly flourished.

“Humph!” said Mr. Farrington.

He was alone in his beautiful house in Brakely Square. His butler, the cook, and one sewing maid and the chauffeur were attending the servants’ ball which the Manley-Potters were giving. Louder grew the voices on the pavement.

It was a bad night in London, not wild or turbulent, but swathed to the eyes like an Eastern woman in a soft grey garment of fog. It engulfed the walled canyons of the city, through which the traffic had roared all day, plugged up the maze of dark side-streets, and blotted out the open squares. Close to the ground it was thick, viscous, impenetrable, so that one could not see a yard ahead, and walked ghostlike, adventuring into a strange world.

Occasionally it dispersed. In front of the Jollity Theatre numbers of arc-lights wrought a wavering mist-hung yellow space, into which a constant line of vehicles, like monstrous shiny beetles, emerged from the outer nowhere, disgorged their contents, and were eclipsed again. And pedestrians in gay processional streamed across the rudy glistening patch like figures on a slide.

Conspicuous in the shifting throng was a sharp-faced boy, ostensibly selling newspapers, but with a keen eye upon the arriving vehicles. Suddenly he darted to the curb, where an electric coupe had just drawn up. A man alighted heavily, and turned to assist a young woman.

For an instant the lad’s attention was deflected by the radiant vision. The girl, wrapped in a voluminous cloak of ivory colour, was tall and slim, with soft white throat and graceful neck; her eyes under shadowy lashes were a little narrow, but blue as autumn mist, and sparkling now with amusement.

“Watch your steps, auntie,” she warned laughingly, as a plump, elderly, little lady stepped stiffly from the coupe. “These London fogs are dangerous.”

The distant chime of Little Bradley church had struck one o’clock, when T. B. Smith stepped from the shadow of the hedge on the east side of the Secret House, and walked slowly toward the road. Two men, crouched in the darkness, rose silently to meet him.

“I think I have found a place,” said T. B., in a low voice. “As I thought, there are electric alarms on the top of the walls, and electric wires threaded through all the hedges. There is a break, however, where, I think, I can circumvent the alarm.”

He led the way back to the place from which he had been making his reconnaissance.

“Here it is,” said T. B.

He touched a thin twine-like wire with his finger. The third man put the concentrated ray of an electric lamp upon it.

“I can make another circuit for this,” he said, and pulled a length of wire from his pocket. Two minutes later, thanks to quick manipulation of his wire, they were able to step in safety across the wall and drop noiselessly into the grounds.

“We shall find a man on duty,” whispered T. B.; “he is patrolling the house, and I have an idea that there are trip-wires on the lawn.”

He had fixed a funnel-like arrangement to the head of his lamp, and now he carefully scrutinized the ground as he walked forward. The funnel was so fixed that it showed no light save on the actual patch of ground he was surveying.

“Here is one,” he said, suddenly.

The party stepped cautiously over the almost invisible line of wire, supported a few inches from the ground by steel uprights, placed at regular intervals.

It was at that moment that a motor came swiftly over the hill from the direction of the rectory. With a jar it came to a sudden stop before the house, and T. B. Smith leapt out.

Brown had seen the detective before on his visits to the rectory, and now hailed him as veritably god-sent.

“Where is Lady Constance?” asked T. B., quickly.

The man pointed to the house with trembling finger.

“She’s in there somewhere,” he said, fretfully, “but I can’t make her answer⁠ ⁠… and the room appears to be very disordered.”

He led the way to the window. T. B. looked in and saw that which confirmed his worst fears.

“Stand back,” he said.

He raised his ebony stick and sent it smashing through the glass. In a second his hand was inside unlocking the latch of the window; a few seconds later he was in the room itself. He passed swiftly from room to room, but there was no sign of Lady Constance. On the floor of the study was a piece of lace collar, evidently wrenched from her gown.

“Hullo!” said Ela, who had followed him. He pointed to the table. On a sheet of paper was the print of a bloody palm.

“Farrington,” said T. B., briefly, “he has been here; but how did he get out?”

He questioned the coachman closely, but the man was emphatic.

“No, sir,” he said, “it would have been impossible for anybody to have passed out of here without my seeing them. Not only could I see the cottage from where I sat, but the whole of the hillside.”