The Greatest Thrillers of Edgar Wallace. Edgar Wallace

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      She set to work to make a closer examination of the apartment.

      The floor was of concrete, covered with a light rush matting. This she carefully rolled up, starting at the door. One half of the floor was uncovered without revealing the existence of any trap. She attempted to pull the table into the centre of the room, better to roll the matting, but found it fixed to the wall, and going down on her knees, she discovered that it had been fixed after the matting had been laid.

      Obviously there was no need for the fixture and, she tapped the floor with her little knuckle. Her heart started racing. The sound her knocking gave forth was a hollow one. She sprang up, took her bag from the table, opened the little penknife and cut carefully through the thin rushes. She might have to replace the matting and it was necessary she should do her work tidily.

      Soon the whole of the trap was revealed. There was an iron ring, which fitted flush with the top and which she pulled. The trap yielded and swung back as though there were a counterbalance at the other end, as indeed there was. She peered down. There was a dim light below — the reflection of a light in the distance. A flight of steps led down to the lower level and after a second’s hesitation she swung her legs over the cavity and began her descent.

      She was in a cellar slightly smaller than that above her. The light she had seen came from an inner apartment which would be underneath the kitchen of the house. She made her way cautiously along, stepping on tip-toe. The first of the rooms she came to was well-furnished. There was a thick carpet on the floor, comfortable easychairs, a little bookcase well filled, and a reading lamp. This must be Kara’s underground study, where he kept his precious papers.

      A smaller room gave from this and again it was doorless. She looked in and after her eyes had become accustomed to the darkness she saw that it was a bathroom handsomely fitted.

      The room she was in was also without any light which came from the farthermost chamber. As the girl strode softly across the well-carpeted room she trod on something hard. She stooped and felt along the floor and her fingers encountered a thin steel chain. The girl was bewildered-almost panic-stricken. She shrunk back from the entrance of the inner room, fearful of what she would see. And then from the interior came a sound that made her tingle with horror.

      It was a sound of a sigh, long and trembling. She set her teeth and strode through the doorway and stood for a moment staring with open eyes and mouth at what she saw.

      “My God!” she breathed, “London … . in the twentieth century … !”

Chapter XI

       Table of Contents

      Superintendent Mansus had a little office in Scotland Yard proper, which, he complained, was not so much a private bureau, as a waiting-room to which repaired every official of the police service who found time hanging on his hands. On the afternoon of Miss Holland’s surprising adventure, a plainclothes man of “D” Division brought to Mr. Mansus’s room a very scared domestic servant, voluble, tearful and agonizingly penitent. It was a mood not wholly unfamiliar to a police officer of twenty years experience and Mr. Mansus was not impressed.

      “If you will kindly shut up,” he said, blending his natural politeness with his employment of the vernacular, “and if you will also answer a few questions I will save you a lot of trouble. You were Lady Bartholomew’s maid weren’t you?”

      “Yes, sir,” sobbed the red-eyed Mary Ann.

      “And you have been detected trying to pawn a gold bracelet, the property of Lady Bartholomew?”

      The maid gulped, nodded and started breathlessly upon a recital of her wrongs.

      “Yes, sir — but she practically gave it to me, sir, and I haven’t had my wages for two months, sir, and she can give that foreigner thousands and thousands of pounds at a time, sir, but her poor servants she can’t pay — no, she can’t. And if Sir William knew especially about my lady’s cards and about the snuffbox, what would he think, I wonder, and I’m going to have my rights, for if she can pay thousands to a swell like Mr. Kara she can pay me and—”

      Mansus jerked his head.

      “Take her down to the cells,” he said briefly, and they led her away, a wailing, woeful figure of amateur larcenist.

      In three minutes Mansus was with T.X. and had reduced the girl’s incoherence to something like order.

      “This is important,” said T.X.; “produce the Abigail.”

      “The — ? asked the puzzled officer.

      “The skivvy — slavey — hired help — get busy,” said T.X. impatiently.

      They brought her to T.X. in a condition bordering upon collapse.

      “Get her a cup of tea,” said the wise chief. “Sit down, Mary Ann, and forget all your troubles.”

      “Oh, sir, I’ve never been in this position before,” she began, as she flopped into the chair they put for her.

      “Then you’ve had a very tiring time,” said T.X. “Now listen—”

      “I’ve been respectable—”

      “Forget it!” said T.X., wearily. “Listen! If you’ll tell me the whole truth about Lady Bartholomew and the money she paid to Mr. Kara—”

      “Two thousand pounds — two separate thousand and by all accounts—”

      “If you will tell me the truth, I’ll compound a felony and let you go free.”

      It was a long time before he could prevail upon her to clear her speech of the ego which insisted upon intruding. There were gaps in her narrative which he bridged. In the main it was a believable story. Lady Bartholomew had lost money and had borrowed from Kara. She had given as security, the snuffbox presented to her husband’s father, a doctor, by one of the Czars for services rendered, and was “all blue enamel and gold, and foreign words in diamonds.” On the question of the amount Lady Bartholomew had borrowed, Abigail was very vague. All that she knew was that my lady had paid back two thousand pounds and that she was still very distressed (“in a fit” was the phrase the girl used), because apparently Kara refused to restore the box.

      There had evidently been terrible scenes in the Bartholomew menage, hysterics and what not, the principal breakdown having occurred when Belinda Mary came home from school in France.

      “Miss Bartholomew is home then. Where is she?” asked T.X.

      Here the girl was more vague than ever. She thought the young lady had gone back again, anyway Miss Belinda had been very much upset. Miss Belinda had seen Dr. Williams and advised that her mother should go away for a change.

      “Miss Belinda seems to be a precocious young person,” said T.X. “Did she by any chance see Mr. Kara?”

      “Oh, no,” explained the girl. “Miss Belinda was above that sort of person. Miss Belinda was a lady, if ever there was one.”

      “And how old is this interesting young woman?” asked T.X. curiously.

      “She СКАЧАТЬ