The Mysterious Three

“What do I want it for?” he exclaimed. “Stand back, and I’ll show you.”

He stepped towards the door, and measured his distance from it with the axe-stem. Then, without removing his coat, or even rolling up his sleeves, he gripped the stem by its extreme end with both hands. With a “whizz” the axe described a complete circle over his head, then descended. The blade, striking the lock in the very middle, wrecked it completely. Another “whizz,” another blow, and the lock fell in fragments on to the floor, with a metallic clatter. A third blow, and the door flew open.

I was about to go out into the passage, when Whichelo caught me by the shoulder and pulled me back.

“Scatter-brained Englishman!” he exclaimed, half in jest. “Doesn’t it occur to you that Paulton may be, and probably is, waiting with a gun?”

I confess it had not occurred to me.

“Then how can we get out?” I asked quickly.

“Just wait,” he answered, “and I’ll show you.”

At this moment we heard voices in the house, apparently in the large entrance-hall – men’s gruff voices. Also there was a tramp of many footfalls. The murmur approached. A door opened and shut. Some of the men were coming along the passage in our direction.

They stopped abruptly, as they reached the pantry where we now stood. At once we saw they were policemen – plain-clothes men, in golf-caps and overcoats, yet by their cut, unmistakably policemen. They looked us up and down suspiciously. Then one of them spoke.

“Where are Paulton and his accomplices?” was the sharp inquiry.

“Somewhere in this house,” Whichelo answered. “I haven’t seen them yet.”

“Not seen ’em! Then why are you here?”

Whichelo produced a card, and handed it to the speaker. Then he unfolded a letter he had withdrawn from his breast-pocket, and handed him that too. This letter was from Thorold, dated some days previously. It contained a request that Whichelo should go to Houghton and begin to make arrangements for his return there.

Satisfied with our bona fides, the police-officers looked inquiringly at the smashed lock.

“Well – and whose work is this?” one of the rural constables asked.

“Mine,” Whichelo answered. “Some one, probably the men you want, locked us in. The only way to get out was to smash the lock. And so I smashed it. I advise you to be careful in your search. Most likely they are armed, and probably they will be desperate at finding themselves entrapped. How did you find out they were here, officer?”

“Two men and a woman, all answering the circulated description of Paulton, Henderson and the woman Coudron, were seen to alight at Oakham station from the last down express last night. They were followed. They hired a conveyance. Its driver was cross-questioned. And so we soon discovered their whereabouts.”

Whichelo had, indeed, done well to warn the police-officers to exercise caution in their search – as it afterwards proved. For a quarter of an hour no trace could be found of the “wanted” men and woman, though the cellars, as well as all the rooms on the ground floor, on the first floor, and the second floor were searched.

In all, there were seven policemen. Whichelo and I accompanied them on their search, and I began to feel excited.

“What about the attics?” Whichelo suggested at last.

“I don’t think they’ll be there,” the police-inspector answered. “I expect they’ve got off into the woods. Still, we may as well go up and see.”

The attics, which constituted the servants’ sleeping-rooms at Houghton, were very large and airy. A long, narrow corridor ran between the rows of rooms. Facing the end of this corridor was a door. This was the door of the largest room of all.

Some of the doors were locked – some not. Whichelo had keys belonging to all the rooms. The door at the end of the corridor the searchers approached last.

Whichelo eagerly tried two or three keys, but none of them fitted. He was forcing in a fourth key, when suddenly, with a deafening roar, an explosion took place within that room.

At the same instant something crashed through the upper panel of the door, leaving a torn ragged hole in the wood, and riddling the wall at the further end of the passage. Everybody sprang back with a cry. Then, to our amazement, we realised that nobody had been hit by the charge of shot, which had travelled straight along the passage. It seemed a miraculous escape. The charge must have grazed Whichelo’s shoulder-blade as he bent down to fit the key.

Scarce had we recovered from our fright, when the barrel of a gun was pushed through that hole. Those inside meant business. The barrel pointed swiftly to the right. There came a blinding flash, another deafening report. It turned quickly to the left, and a third shot echoed through the house. Wildly we had thrown ourselves flat upon the floor. The charges had swept over us, cutting great furrows in the wall on either side.

“Look out! It’s a repeater!” I shouted, as I noticed the magazine beneath the barrel. “Keep back! Keep well away, all of you!”

The barrel swept from left to right, and right to left. It was resting on the smashed panel, and I guessed that whoever held it, had the butt pressed to his shoulder, and was endeavouring to discover our whereabouts before firing again. The fact that we might all be lying flat upon the ground, close to the door, apparently had not occurred to the man handling the gun.

Truly, that was a most exciting moment. Suddenly Whichelo moved. He was whispering into the ear of the constable crouching beside him. Swiftly the latter produced his truncheon, and Whichelo took it. Cautiously, noiselessly, he scrambled on all fours, then up to his feet. Now he stood upright, the truncheon firmly clenched in his right hand. Then, suddenly, grasping the protruding gun-barrel with his left hand, he dealt it a terrific blow close to the muzzle with the long, heavy, wooden truncheon.

And that single blow did it. The barrel, badly bent, was useless.

Quickly we all sprang to our feet and ran pell-mell down the passage. Though an ignominious retreat, it was the only move possible. Nor were we too soon. Hardly had we reached safety, round the corner of the passage, when another shot rang forth, and the wall facing the door was again riddled with pellets.

“They seem to have a battery,” the inspector said, when we were once more in the hall. “We shall need to starve them out,” he observed later. “There’s no other alternative that I see. I’ve never seen such a thing as this before in all my years in the Rutland constabulary.”

“Starve them!” I exclaimed. “And how long will that take? For aught we know, they may be well-provisioned.”

“It’s the only thing to do, sir,” he repeated doggedly. “We can’t smoke them out; and we can’t very well burn them out; and I doubt if the law will let us shoot them, though they shoot at us.”

“That may be so,” Whichelo cut in quietly. “But I tell you this now – I’m going to take the law into my own hands.”

The officer looked alarmed.

“You can’t,” the inspector exclaimed, as if unable to believe his ears. To your average police-officer the thought of a man’s audacity to “take the law into his own hands,” seems incredible. “You can’t, sir,” he repeated. “You can’t, indeed!”

“You think not?” Whichelo said, coolly, gazing down upon them all from his great height. “Come along, Ashton,” he called to me. “I’m going to teach a lesson to those vermin upstairs.”

I followed him out to the back premises, and thence along a passage to the gun-room, the door of which stood open. As we entered, Whichelo uttered an exclamation.

And no wonder, for the room had been ransacked. The glass front of the gun-rack had been smashed, several shot-guns had been removed – I remembered there had always been three or four guns in this baize-covered rack, now there was only one – and about the floor were empty cartridge-boxes, their covers lying in splinters, as though the boxes had been hurriedly ripped open. The repeating-gun that had been fired at us was probably the Browning which Sir Charles used for duck-shooting, for this was among the missing weapons.

“They intend to hold a siege,” Whichelo said, after a pause. “They’ve provided themselves with a stack of ammunition. This is going to be a big affair, Ashton, a much bigger affair than even we anticipated.”

Carefully he took down the only gun left in the rack.

“This is of no use,” he said, looking at it contemptuously. “It’s a twenty-eight bore.”

The outlook certainly was very black. True, there were nine of us. Had we been twenty, however, the situation would hardly have been better. For there, up in that attic, in a position commanding the full length of the corridor, were two desperate men, armed with guns, and provided with hundreds of rounds of ammunition, which, as we knew, they would not hesitate to use. The question which occurred to us, of course, was: how were they provisioned? Given food and drink to last a week, and who could say what damage they might do?

I went with Whichelo out into the Park. The woods were looking glorious. It was a perfect evening, too, soft and balmy, with that delightful smell of freshness peculiar to the English countryside and impossible, adequately, to describe in print.

We were perhaps ninety yards from the house, with our backs to it, as we strolled towards the copse. All at once a double shot rang out behind us on the still, evening air. At the same instant I felt sharp points of burning pain all over my back and legs. Whipping round, I saw a figure on the roof, outlined against the moonlit sky, just disappearing.

Whichelo too, had been badly peppered. Fortunately we wore thick country tweeds, and these had, to some extent, protected us.

Chapter Twenty Eight

The Unknown To-morrow

Take it from me. It is not pleasant to be wounded, even in a good cause.