VINTAGE MYSTERIES - 70+ Stories in One Volume (Thriller Classics Series). Robert Barr

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СКАЧАТЬ ten when the chief constable arrived. I flatter myself I put some life into that unimaginative man before I was done with him.

      'What made you think that the butler was mounting the stair when he fell?'

      'He was going up with my lord's breakfast,' replied the chief.

      'Then did it not occur to you that if such were the case, the silver pitcher would not have been empty, and, besides the broken dishes, there would have been the rolls, butter, toast, or what not, strewn about the floor?'

      The chief constable opened his eyes.

      'There was no one else for him to bring breakfast to,' he objected.

      'That is where you are very much mistaken. Bring me the boots the butler wore.'

      'He did not wear boots, sir. He wore a pair of cloth slippers.'

      'Do you know where they are?'

      'Yes; they are in the boot closet.'

      'Very well, bring them out, examine their soles, and sticking in one of them you will find a short sliver of pointed oak.'

      The constable, looking slightly more stupefied than ever, brought the slippers, and I heard him ejaculate: 'Well, I'm blowed!' as he approached me. He handed me the slippers soles upward, and there, as I have stated, was the fragment of oak, which I pulled out.

      'Now, if you take this piece of oak to the top of the stair, you will see that it fits exactly a slight interstice at the edge of one of the planks. It is as well to keep one's eyes open, constable, when investigating a case like this.'

      'Well, I'm blowed!' he said again, as we walked up the stair together.

      I showed him that the sliver taken from the slipper fitted exactly the interstice I had indicated.

      'Now,' said I to him, 'the butler was not going up the stairs, but was coming down. When he fell headlong he must have made a fearful clatter. Shuffling along with his burden, his slipper was impaled by this sliver, and the butler's hands being full, he could not save himself, but went head foremost down the stair. The startling point, however, is the fact that he was not carrying my lord's breakfast to him, or taking it away from him, but that there is someone else in the castle for whom he was caterer. Who is that person?'

      'I'm blessed if I know,' said the constable, 'but I think you are wrong there. He may not have been carrying up the breakfast, but he certainly was taking away the tray, as is shown by the empty dishes, which you have just a moment ago pointed out.'

      'No, constable; when his lordship heard the crash, and sprang impulsively from his bed, he upset the little table on which had been placed his own tray; it shot over the oaken chest at the head of the bed, and if you look between it and the wall you will find tray, dishes, and the remnants of a breakfast.'

      'Well, I'm blessed!' exclaimed the chief constable once again.

      'The main point of all this,' I went on calmly, 'is not the disaster to the butler, nor even the shock to his lordship, but the fact that the tray the serving man carried brought food to a prisoner, who probably for six weeks has been without anything to eat.'

      'Then,' said the constable, 'he is a dead man.'

      'I find it easier,' said I, 'to believe in a living man than in a dead man's ghost. I think I heard his footsteps at midnight, and they seemed to me the footsteps of a person very nearly exhausted. Therefore, constable, I have awaited your arrival with some impatience. The words his late lordship endeavoured to write on the paper were "The Secret". I am sure that the hieroglyphics with which he ended his effort stood for the letter "R", and if he finished his sentence, it would have stood: "The secret room". Now, constable, it is a matter of legend that a secret room exists in this castle. Do you know where it is?'

      'No one knows where the secret room is, or the way to enter it, except the Lords of Rantremly.'

      'Well, I can assure you that the Lord of Rantremly who lives in London knows nothing about it. I have been up and about since daylight, taking some rough measurements by stepping off distances. I surmise that the secret room is to the left of this stairway. Probably a whole suite of rooms exists, for there is certainly a stair coinciding with this one, and up that stair at midnight I heard a club-footed man ascend. Either that, or the ghost that has frightened you all, and, as I have said, I believe in the man.'

      Here the official made the first sensible remark I had yet heard him utter:—

      'If the walls are so thick that a prisoner's cry has not been heard, how could you hear his footsteps, which make much less noise?'

      'That is very well put, constable, and when the same thing occurred to me earlier this morning, I began to study the architecture of this castle. In the first place, the entrance hall is double as wide at the big doors as it is near the stairway. If you stand with your back to the front door you will at once wonder why the builders made this curious and unnecessary right angle, narrowing the farther part of the hall to half its width. Then, as you gaze at the stair, and see that marvellous carved oak newel post standing like a monumental column, you guess, if you have any imagination, that the stairway, like the hall, was once double as wide as it is now. We are seeing only half of it, and doubtless we shall find a similar newel post within the hidden room. You must remember, constable, that these secret apartments are no small added chambers. Twice they have sheltered a king.'

      The constable's head bent low at the mention of royalty. I saw that his insular prejudice against me and my methods was vanishing, and that he had come to look upon me with greater respect than was shown at first.

      'The walls need not be thick to be impenetrable to sound. Two courses of brick, and a space between filled with deafening would do it. The secret apartment has been cut off from the rest of the house since the castle was built, and was not designed by the original architect. The partition was probably built in a hurry to fulfil a pressing need, and it was constructed straight up the middle of the stair, leaving the stout planks intact, each step passing thus, as it were, through the wall. Now, when a man walks up the secret stairway, his footsteps reverberate until one would swear that some unseen person was treading the visible boards on the outside.'

      'By Jove!' said the constable, in an awed tone of voice.

      'Now, officer, I have here a pickaxe and a crowbar. I propose that we settle the question at once.'

      But to this proposal the constable demurred.

      'You surely would not break the wall without permission from his lordship in London?'

      'Constable, I suspect there is no Lord Rantremly in London, and that we will find a very emaciated but genuine Lord Rantremly within ten feet of us. I need not tell you that if you are instrumental in his immediate rescue without the exercise of too much red tape, your interests will not suffer because you the more speedily brought food and drink to the lord paramount of your district.'

      'Right you are,' cried the constable, with an enthusiasm for which I was not prepared. 'Where shall we begin?'

      'Oh, anywhere; this wall is all false from the entrance hall to some point up here. Still, as the butler was carrying the meal upstairs I think we shall save time if we begin on the landing.'

      I found the constable's brawn much superior to his brain. He worked like a sansculotte on a barricade. When we had torn down part of the old oak panelling, which it seemed such a pity СКАЧАТЬ