Whatsoever a Man Soweth

When he saw it he knit his brows. Like ourselves, he scented tragedy, especially as the poor girl Jane was lying dead.

The inspector was also shown the secret cavity beneath the carpet. He examined the windows of all the rooms on the ground floor, made a tour of the exterior of the house, and closely questioned all the servants.

The absence of the master of the house somewhat puzzled him, for the cook explained that Mr Parham returned from the country two days before and remained at home all the afternoon, packed another big travelling bag and left again about seven o’clock, telling his wife that he had to go to Birmingham.

When, a little later, we returned to the drawing-room we found Mrs Parham propped up with pillows and attended by the doctor and the housemaid. She was talking with them, and looked at me inquiringly as I entered with the inspector. She probably took me for a police officer in plain clothes.

“I was sitting at the piano playing when Jane entered and drew down one of the blinds,” she said, in a low voice, speaking with some difficulty. “Then she switched on the light and drew down the other blind. At that instant I heard a movement behind me, and turning I saw a man, but next moment something was slipped over my head and eyes. I struggled and at the same time heard Jane cry out. While my assailant held me tightly I heard Jane struggling, therefore there must have been two men in the room at least. A few moments later I lost consciousness and know nothing else until I found you all here standing around me. What has happened?” she inquired, in a refined voice, looking from the doctor across to me.

“We don’t quite know yet, mum,” answered the police inspector. “It seems as though the men were thieves who being disturbed slipped away.”

“Thieves!” she gasped, open-mouthed. “Have they taken anything?”

“We can’t make out. When you feel a little better you must come round the house with us.”

“They’ve opened a place under the floor, across there,” explained the doctor, pointing to the corner where the carpet was still laid back from the boards.

She raised herself quickly upon her elbow and glanced in the direction indicated, staring straight at the spot with a look of terror in her eyes. No word escaped her lips. Her jaws seemed again fixed, her breath held, her fingers clenched into the palms.

She realised that the secret hiding-place had been discovered.

“What have they taken?” she gasped, in a low, terrified tone, when at last she found tongue.

“Apparently everything,” I replied. “The place is empty.”

“Empty!” she echoed, raising herself to her feet with an effort, but reeling unsteadily back to the couch, for her head was still swimming after the effects of the chloroform. “The fiends!” she cried.

“And poor Jane. How is she?”

“I much regret, madam, that the chloroform administered to her has had a fatal effect,” said the doctor, gravely.

“Dead! Jane dead?”

“Yes. They’ve killed her,” declared the inspector. “It’s wilful murder, that’s what it is, mum. Therefore, if you can give us any information as to who these ruffians may be we’ll be very glad. We must arrest them at all costs. Who do you think they might be?”

But Mrs Parham, although a strange look crossed her white, haggard features, made no response to the officer’s question.

“Poor Jane! Poor Jane – the brutes!” she kept on repeating, her wild eyes staring across to where the body of the dead maid-servant was lying.

From her manner I felt convinced that she suspected who the intruders were, now that she knew that their motive had been to search in that secret cavity beneath the floor of the drawing-room, and possess themselves of something concealed there.

Would she denounce them?

The inspector again questioned her, but her answers were evasive.

“My husband is in the country,” she explained. “He is very often away, for his business often takes him on the Continent, to Paris and Amsterdam.”

“But how do you think these men got into the house?” the officer asked. “I notice that the inner glass door of the hall closes with a latch which can only be opened from the inside. Therefore, if they had entered the front door with a false key they could not have passed the inner door.”

This fact was interesting, and one which I had entirely overlooked.

“I have no idea how they could have entered. Perhaps by a window.”

“Or perhaps by the servants’ entrance,” Lane suggested.

“They couldn’t have got in that way, mum, because they’d have to pass through the kitchen, and cook was there all the time. Besides, we’re always very careful that that door is never left ajar.”

“It’s evident that they were concealed in the house,” I remarked, recollecting that tall shadowy figure that had crossed the room on tip-toe at the instant that the blind had been lowered.

“Of course,” agreed the inspector. “But what we want to know is whether this lady has any suspicion of anyone to whose advantage it would be to obtain possession of what was concealed there.”

“I don’t know what was in there,” she declared, in a weak, nervous voice. “My husband made the place himself a few months ago, as he often has valuable jewellery here. In the City he has a strong room, of course, but here he deemed it best to make a secret hiding-place rather than have a fire-proof safe, which is always discussed by servants, and the knowledge of which in a private house so soon becomes common property.”

“Then he used to keep valuables there?” asked the inspector.

“I believe so, but I never looked inside. It opened with a spring, the secret of which he alone knew.”

“Who made it? The man who constructed it knew the secret, no doubt. He may be one of those implicated.”

“The piece of board with the spring he brought home with him from Paris one day. It was made there, he said. The steel box was made somewhere in Chelsea.”

“And who fitted the board so evenly?”

“He did himself. He is an amateur cabinetmaker, and at one time used to make furniture. He made that table over there,” she added, pointing to a small round table standing near the corner where was the secret cavity.

“Then no workman was actually employed in fitting it up?” remarked the inspector, disappointedly.

“No. He did it himself, so that nobody should know. And he would not even let me know the secret of the spring.”

“Which showed some distrust,” remarked the inspector. “He evidently possessed something there which he did not wish you to see.”

“Yes. That, however, is not surprising,” she remarked. “Many husbands have secrets – family affairs and such like – with which they hesitate to trouble their wives.”

“Certainly,” he said, glancing dubiously at me, and no doubt recollecting that gruesome object now in the doctor’s pocket. “But it seems very strange that thieves should come here so boldly, attack both you and the maid-servant, and go straight to that secret hiding-place if there was not some very strong motive. They evidently knew there was something there – something of which they desired to obtain possession.”

“But they didn’t know the secret of the spring, for they prised it open.”

I placed my hand in my overcoat pocket, and it came in contact with the portrait which I had succeeded in taking – the picture of the dead unknown.

Why had it been kept in such a prominent position in her room? I longed to question her, but at that moment was unable.

The mystery of the murderous attack in which the maid had lost her life; the mystery of that tall, thin man who crept across the apartment; the mystery of the theft; the mystery of the human eye, were all enigmas utterly beyond solution.

I took Laking aside and obtained a promise from him not to explain the circumstances under which we had met. Then to Mrs Parham I introduced myself later as a casual passer-by who had been alarmed by the startling discovery. I did this because I intended to call again and make the acquaintance of her husband.

Half an hour later, after all inquiry of Mrs Parham had failed to elicit a single fact regarding any person who might have a motive for the outrage and robbery, I left the house, and walked down the dark, deserted suburban thoroughfare accompanied by the police inspector, who was on his way back to the station to telegraph the curious facts to Scotland Yard.

“Well?” I asked, when we were out in the roadway, “and what do you make of the affair?”