Footsteps in the Dark Read online

  They started once more to try and move one of the stone blocks that made up the wall. ‘The things the perlice get up to!’ Mr Fripp remarked. ‘Give me an honest job of burglary, that’s what I say! Well, it ain’t ’ere, sir. If we’ve got many more of these rooms to go over you’ll have to send me to one of them sanatoriums where you lay out on a nice balcony the whole blooming day.’

  But only one other room led out of the one they were in, and it was comparatively small. They started to test its walls, but before Peter had got more than half-way along his side of the room Michael said: ‘Got it!’

  He set his shoulder to the block, and it swung easily and silently on its hidden pivot.

  ‘Took the trouble to oil this one,’ commented Mr Fripp. ‘Now mind what you’re about, sir. Let me ’ave a look!’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Michael said, drawing his head and shoulders back into the room. ‘Only be careful how you step, Margaret. We’re right on the staircase. Can you get through if I go first, and give you a hand?’

  ‘Good Lord, yes!’ she said. As soon as he had climbed through the gap, she scrambled after him, and found herself standing on the narrow stone stairway. They seemed to be somewhere in the middle of it, for the stairs went down as well as up.

  The other two squeezed through the opening, and Michael pressed the block back into position. The light of his torch showed nothing to distinguish this block from any of the others.

  ‘We shall have to count the stairs,’ Michael said. ‘I propose to explore downstairs after I’ve deposited you two at the Priory. Mind how you step, Margaret: the stairs are very steep and narrow.’

  They climbed in silence, each of them counting to themselves as they went. Margaret’s legs were aching badly by the time they came to a halt; and she was thankful to get even a short rest.

  Michael’s torch was playing over the wall that flanked the staircase on the right, and they saw that the stone had ended, and they were standing behind rough brick. Michael moved on again.

  ‘There! If I haven’t lorst count!’ said Mr Fripp disgustedly.

  The brick gave place to what looked like a wooden partition of thick deal.

  ‘Clever,’ Michael said. ‘Nailed the deal on behind the oak panel to deaden the hollow sound. Here we are!’ His torch showed a plain round knob past the panel. He went on up two more stairs, and twisted it. Nothing happened. ‘That’s odd!’ Michael said. ‘It surely must be this knob that corresponds to the apple in the carving the other side. You didn’t do anything but turn it, did you, Margaret?’

  ‘No, nothing.’

  He asked abruptly: ‘Did the Monk come up or down?’

  ‘Up. I was standing on the second stair, where Peter is now, when the panel closed.’

  ‘There’s no knob farther down,’ Michael said. An idea occurred to him. ‘I wonder – get off that stair, will you, Fortescue?’

  Peter moved, and as Michael once more turned the knob the panel slid back.

  ‘Clever little dodge,’ Michael remarked.

  He was interrupted by a strangled shriek from within the library. ‘Charles, look! look!’ Celia cried.

  ‘Seventy-three, counting this one,’ Peter said. ‘It’s all right, Celia: it’s us!’

  Eighteen

  HE STEPPED THROUGH THE OPENING INTO THE LIBRARY, as he spoke, and found himself confronting Charles’ levelled revolver. Celia and Mrs Bosanquet were gazing with startled fixity at him, and Inspector Tomlinson had just lowered a Colt automatic.

  Charles put down his revolver, and swallowed twice before he spoke. Then he said: ‘Oh, hullo! Just back?’ His flippancy deserted him. ‘Gosh, you have given us a fright! Where’s Margaret? What happened?’

  Margaret came through the aperture, and at sight of her Celia jumped up and flew to embrace her. ‘Oh, darling, I’ve been thinking you dead ever since ten o’clock!’ she said, half-crying. ‘Who found you? Did you escape by yourselves?’

  By this time both Michael and Fripp had come into the room. Charles wrung Michael’s hand. ‘Good man! Yes, we know all about you. The inspector had to split on you.’

  There was a positive babel of talk. After a while Mrs Bosanquet made herself heard above it. ‘But surely that is the man who cleaned all the rooms so thoroughly?’ she said in a bewildered voice, and pointed at Fripp.

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ said Fripp with feeling, ‘and if I was you I wouldn’t have one of them cleaners in the house, not if I was paid to. They’re enough to break your heart.’

  Michael, who had been speaking to Inspector Tomlinson, now glanced at his watch. ‘Good Lord, it’s almost five o’clock! Fripp and I had better hurry, or we shall run into one of the servants at the Inn. Look here, you people, the best thing you can do is to go to bed, and get what sleep you can. I’ll come back after breakfast, tell you some of the things you’re all dying to know, and set about the job of finding that other entrance. Now that you’ve discovered this panel it ought to be easy. There’s only one other thing: Fortescue and his sister have got to keep themselves hidden. No one must know that they’ve been found. See? No one. In fact you must give the impression to anyone you happen to see that you’re worried to death, and are sure that they must have gone out, and got kidnapped in the grounds, or something of that sort.’ He looked at Mrs Bowers rather dubiously, but she nodded. ‘Sure you understand? And don’t let that housemaid of yours find them here.’

  ‘It’s her half-day,’ said Mrs Bowers. ‘Nor she don’t turn up till nine in the mornings, and mostly late. I’ll nip up and make Miss Margaret’s and Mr Peter’s beds before she gets here, and she don’t ever go into any of the sitting-rooms.’

  ‘Better not have her at all to-morrow,’ Charles said. ‘Can you get rid of her without her smelling a rat, Emma?’

  She thought for a moment. ‘Yes, sir. If Miss Margaret and Mr Peter aren’t supposed to be here there’ll only be the two bedrooms to do. I’ll say she can have the whole day, since we’re all at sixes and sevens. You leave it to me.’

  Mrs Bosanquet had been scrutinising Michael through her lorgnette. She now turned to Charles, and said in the perfectly audible voice deaf people imagine to be a whisper: ‘My dear, you may say what you please about that young man being a detective, but it appears to me that he is the same malicious person who pointed at me in the dark.’

  Michael laughed. ‘I’ve never pointed at you, Mrs Bosanquet. I’ll explain it all to you later. Come on, Fripp: we’ll go back the way we came. You’ll turn up again later in the morning, inspector. You understand what I want you to do?’

  ‘Yes. Send a man over to make a lot of inquiries, and make it seem we’re on the wrong track. Well, Flinders will do a bit of searching all the morning, I don’t doubt, and so long as he doesn’t know the truth he’ll put every one off the scent. I’ll get back to the station now, and be with you again about ten.’

  Margaret said worriedly: ‘Must you go back that way? I suppose it’s safe, but I don’t like to think of you down there.’

  Charles opened his eyes at that, but Margaret did not notice his surprise.

  ‘I shall be all right,’ Michael said. ‘You go and get some sleep. So long!’ He went through on to the stair, Fripp followed him, and as Michael set his foot on the second step the panel slid into place again.

  Charles went to see the inspector off the premises. When he came back Margaret was telling her story to her sister and aunt. Charles listened to it in silence, but when she had finished he drew a long breath. ‘Talk about halfwits!’ he said. ‘Why did you want to go and step into the cavity?’

  ‘I know it was silly, but…’

  ‘Silly?’ said Charles. ‘Call a spade a spade for once. You go through the opening, drop bracelets about, shout to Peter to come and have a look at what you’ve found, as though it were a sovereign left over from before the war, and then you’re surprised the Monk grabs you. I don’t blame him, poor chap. As for Peter – can you beat it? If his face was different he’d be cut ou