The Mysterious Three

“Sometimes for five or ten minutes, sometimes as much as half-an-hour, or more. Three nights ago two windows were lit up at one-twenty and remained lit until two-fifty-five.”

“And do you mean to say nobody goes into the house or comes out of it?”

“Nobody. Nobody at all. It’s being watched front and back. Twice we’ve been in and hunted the place all over – we got leave to do this – but there was nothing, nor no one nowhere.”

“Oh,” I exclaimed incredulously, “that is a ridiculous thing to say. If a light really appears and disappears, there must be somebody in the house. Probably there’s a secret entrance of which you know nothing about.”

“There are only three entrances,” he answered quickly, “and one of ’em can’t rightly be called an entrance. There’s the front door, and the back door for the tradesmen, and then there’s a queer little way out into Crane’s alley – we can’t think why that entrance was ever made.”

The “queer little way out” I at once guessed to be the dark, underground, narrow little stone cellar-passage through which Vera had led me when we had escaped together on the day I had discovered her hidden in the house.

“And are the entrances all locked?” I asked.

“Oh, you may take that from me,” he replied. “They are locked right enough, and nobody don’t get the keys, neither.”

At that moment, oddly enough, the thought of the curious-looking brown stain in the corner of the ceiling on the first floor, that I had noticed on the day I had explored the unoccupied house, came suddenly back into my mind.

I must have talked to the policeman for fully fifteen minutes, and had asked him many questions. Before the end of that time I had, however, discovered that he was of a superstitious nature, and that he did not at all like what was happening.

I pondered for a little while, then I said —

“Look here, officer” – if you want to please a policeman always call him “officer” – “I am going to peep into that room, and you must help me.”

“Me, sir?”

“Yes, you. What are policemen for, except to help people? Now listen. I can’t, of course, get into the house, but I am going to arrange for a ladder to be brought here to-night that will reach to the first-floor windows. This street is, I’m sure, quite deserted in the small hours of the morning. The ladder will be hoisted up by the men who bring it, you will keep an eye up and down the street to see that nobody comes along to interrupt us. Then I shall crawl up the ladder and peer in at the window. If there is space between the boards wide enough to admit light, the space must be wide enough to enable me to peep into the room.”

“It’s a bit risky, sir.”

“Risky? Not the slightest. I’ll make it worth your while to undertake what risk there is. So that is understood. You are on duty here to-night at two o’clock?”

“Oh, yes, sir, but – ”

“There is no ‘but.’ I shall see you later, then.”

I returned to King Street. My man John had a friend who worked for a builder, he told me. This friend of his would, he said, arrange everything, and be delighted to. Oh, yes, he had a ladder. He had several ladders. He could bring along single-handed, a ladder the length I wanted, and set it in position.

This was satisfactory. I went to a theatre in order to kill time, for I felt excited and terribly impatient. I had not told Vera of my plan, or Faulkner, or indeed anybody but the policeman.

The builder’s man was punctual to the minute. He had concealed the ladder in Crane’s Court before dark, thinking suspicion might be aroused were he to be seen carrying a ladder through the streets of London in the middle of the night. Two o’clock had just struck, when he crept stealthily into Belgrave Square with the ladder over his shoulder. Acting upon my instructions, he laid it flat upon the pavement. Impatiently I waited. A quarter-past two chimed on some far-distant clock. Still the windows remained in darkness.

Twenty minutes passed… Twenty-five… I began to feel anxious. Would this mysterious visitor not come to-night? That would indeed be a bitter disappointment. Ah!

The light had appeared. It was on the first floor. Now it percolated feebly between the boards covering two windows.

At a signal from me the man picked up the ladder, raised it to a vertical position, then let it rest, without a sound, against the window-sill.

“All right, sir,” he whispered to me.

Restraining my excitement, I began slowly, cautiously, to creep up the rungs.

Chapter Twenty One

Contains a Further Surprise

The boards covering the windows were about an inch thick, but, with the slovenliness unfortunately too common among British workmen, they had been nailed up “anyhow,” and between the two boards immediately facing me was a space an inch or more. Through that, I saw the weak light, as of a candle.

Two rungs higher up I climbed, leant forward, and endeavoured to glue my eye to this crack, in order to peer into the room.

It was by no means easy to see more than a narrow strip of the room, and that strip was empty. Guessing, however, that something I should be able to see must soon happen in the room, I decided to wait. I suppose I must have waited about five minutes – it seemed like a quarter of an hour – my eye was beginning to ache, and I had a crick in my neck, when of a sudden a shadow fell across the bare boards – the strip of floor that I could see – and then a second shadow. A moment later a man stood in the room, his back to the window, a light in his hand. At once I recognised the man by his colossal stature.

It was the dark giant I knew as Davies.

What was he doing? I could not see. Some one was beside him, also with his back turned. I started. This second man was Sir Charles Thorold, undoubtedly. They were conversing, but I could not, of course, catch their words.

Sir Charles was bending down. He seemed to be on all fours. Now Davies was on all fours too. They were both crawling on all fours about the floor, as though searching for something.

With breathless interest I watched them. They had passed out of my range of vision, though a pair of feet were still visible. The feet remained in sight for quite a long time, ten minutes or more. Then they too disappeared.

“What on earth are they about?” was my mental comment. “What can they be seeking?”

It had seemed obvious that they had been trying to find something.

Still on the ladder I waited, hoping that something more might happen, but I saw nothing more, and presently the light was extinguished. I judged that some one had carried the candle into another room. Apparently there was no object in waiting longer on the ladder, so I cautiously descended to the ground again.

I felt satisfied, and yet dissatisfied, with the result of my observation.

It was satisfactory to know who the people were who visited the house in this mysterious way in the small hours. But it was unsatisfactory not to have found out why they went there at that time of night, and thus secretively – or why they went there at all.

Just as I reached the ground, thought of the advertisement I had noticed in the Morning Post floated back into my mind —

“Meet me 2.”

Could there be any connexion between that advertisement and these mysterious visits at two in the morning? It seemed unlikely, and yet it was somewhat curious.

I did not tell the expectant constable more than I deemed it good that he should know. I told him I thought I had discovered the presence of two men in the house, but I did not say they were men I knew and could identify.

He was pleased with the half-sovereign I gave him, and hinted clearly that he would always be glad to render me any service in his power. It always interests me to observe how readily the milk of human kindness comes oozing out where one least expects it, provided the “source” whence it springs is “handled” in the right way.

As he had said this, I determined to take him at his word. I had seen enough to excite my curiosity and to stimulate in me a keen desire actually to enter the house. But how could this be arranged?

Everything is possible of accomplishment, I find, if you set about it in the right way. I had obtained from the policeman his private address in Rodney Street, Walworth Road, and, on the following evening, when he was off duty, I looked in to see him.

Rarely have I been more welcomed by anybody than I was by that policeman and his wife, or more hospitably entertained. Plenty of men of about my own social standing would, I know, think me quite mad if I told them I had hobnobbed with “a common policeman.” The club would have been shocked. “My dear fellah,” I can hear them saying, “you really should draw the line somewhere, don’t you know. A gentleman is a gentleman, and a policeman is – well, is a policeman – eh, what? He may be an exceedingly good and honest fellah, and all that sort of thing, don’t you know, but, after all, we must keep to people in our own station of life, or we shall be dining with each other’s valets next, and one’s friend’s butler will be asking one to lunch with him at his club. I’m cosmopolitan myself, up to a point, but really one must keep the classes distinct, we must keep ourselves aloof from the common people, or where will it end, don’t you know? As I say, a gentleman is a gentleman, and a man who isn’t a gentleman, well, he isn’t a gentleman – you can’t get away from that.”

To which my only reply would be that, to my knowledge, there are plenty of “gentlemen” who are not gentlemen, and quite a sensible proportion of the men we do self-complacently term “bounders” who are men of high ideals and of great refinement.

During supper, to which he had asked me half-apologetically, the constable entertained me with many good stories, for he had been seventeen years in the Metropolitan Police, and had seen much of life in London during that time. I waited until we had finished supper, and his wife had retired, before submitting for his approval the proposal I had come to make.