Terror Keep · Chapter 11 (1/3)

XI

Mr. Reeder closed the door, put on the lights, and set himself to unravel the inexplicable mystery of its opening. Before he went to bed he had shot home the bolt, had turned the key in the lock, and the key was still on the inside. It struck him, as he turned it, that he had never heard a lock that moved so silently or a bolt that slipped so easily into its groove. Both lock and bolt had been recently oiled. He began a scrutiny of the inside face of the door, and provided a simple solution to the somewhat baffling incident of its opening.

The door consisted of eight panels, carved in small lozenge-shaped ornaments. The panel immediately above the lock moved slightly when he pressed it, but it was a long time before he found the tiny spring which held it in place. When that was found, the panel opened like a miniature door. He could thrust his hand through the aperture and slide back the bolt with the greatest ease.

There was nothing very unusual or sinister about this. He knew that many hotels and boarding houses had methods by which a door could be unlocked from the outside⁠—a very necessary precaution in certain eventualities. Mr. Reeder wondered whether he would find a similar safety panel on the door of Margaret Belman’s room.

By the time he had completed his inspection, it was daylight, and, pulling back the curtains, he drew a chair to the window and made a survey of as much of the grounds as lay within his line of vision.

There were two or three matters which were puzzling him. If Larmes Keep was the headquarters of the Flack gang, in what manner and for what reason had Olga Crewe been brought into the confederation? He judged her age at twenty-four; she had been a constant visitor, if not a resident, at Larmes Keep for at least ten years, and he knew enough of the ways of the underworld to realize that they did not employ children. Also she had been to a public school of some kind, and that would have absorbed at least four of the ten years. Mr. Reeder shook his head in doubt.

Nothing would happen now until dark, he decided, and, stretching himself upon the bed, he pulled the coverlet over him and slept till a tapping at the door announced the coming of the housemaid with his morning tea. She was a round-faced woman, just past her first youth, with a disagreeable cockney accent and the brusque and familiar manner of one who was an indispensable part of the establishment. Mr. Reeder remembered that the girl had waited on him at dinner.

“Why, sir, you haven’t undressed!” she said.

“I seldom undress,” said Mr. Reeder, sitting up and taking the tea from her. “It is such a waste of time. For no sooner are your clothes off than it is necessary to put them on again.”

She looked at him hard, but he did not smile.

“You’re a detective, ain’t you? Everybody at the cottage knows that you are. What have you come down about?”

Now Mr. Reeder could afford to smile cryptically. There was a suppressed anxiety in the girl’s voice.

“It is not for me, my dear young lady, to disclose your employer’s business.”

“He brought you down? Well, he’s got a nerve!”

Mr. Reeder put his finger to his lips.

“About the candlesticks?”

He nodded.

“He still thinks somebody in the house took them?”

Her face was very red, her eyes snapped angrily. Here was exposed one of the minor scandals of the hotel.

It was not an uninteresting sidelight. For if ever guilt was written on a woman’s face it was on hers. What these candlesticks were and how they disappeared, Mr. Reeder could guess. Petty larceny runs in well-defined channels.

“Well, you can tell him from me⁠—” she began shrilly, and he raised a solemn hand.

“Keep the matter to yourself⁠—regard me as your friend,” he begged.

He was in his lighter moments a most mischievous man, a weakness that few suspected in Mr. J. G. Reeder. Moreover, he wanted badly some inside information about the household, and he had an idea that this infuriated girl who flounced out and slammed the door behind her would supply him with that information. In his most optimistic moments he could not dream that in her raw hands she held the secret of Larmes Keep.

As soon as he came down, Mr. Reeder decided to go to Daver’s office; he was curious to learn the true story of the missing candlesticks. The sound of an angry voice reached him, and as his hand was raised to knock at the door, it was opened by somebody who was holding the handle on the inside, and he heard a woman’s angry voice.

“You’ve treated me shabbily: that’s all I can say to you, Mr. Daver! I’ve been working for you five years and I’ve never said a word about your business to anybody! And now you bring a detective down to spy on me! I won’t be treated as if I was a thief or something! If you think that’s behaving fair and square, after all I’ve done for you, and minding my own business.⁠ ⁠… Yes, I know I’ve been well paid, but I could get just as much money somewhere else. I’ve got my pride, Mr. Daver, the same as you have, and I think you’ve been very underhand, the way you’ve treated me. I’ll go tonight, don’t you worry!”

The door was flung open and a red-faced girl of twenty-five flounced out and dashed past the eavesdropper, scarcely noticing him in her fury. The door shut behind her; evidently Mr. Daver was in as bad a temper as the girl⁠—a fortunate circumstance, as it proved, and Mr. Reeder decided it might be inadvisable to advertise that he had overheard the whole or part of the conversation.

When he strolled out into the sunlit grounds, of all the people who had been disturbed during the night he was the brightest and showed the least sign of fatigue. He met the Rev. Mr. Dean and the Colonel, who was carrying a golf bag, and they bade him a gruff good morning. The Colonel, he thought, was a little haggard; Mr. Dean gave him a scowl as he passed.

Walking up and down the lawn, he examined the front of the house with a critical eye. The lines of the Keep were very definite: harsh and angular; not even the Tudor windows, which at some remote period had been introduced to its stony face, could disguise its ancient grimness.

Turning an angle of the house, he reached the strip of lawn that faced his own window. Behind the lawn was a mass of rhododendron bushes, which might serve a useful purpose, but which in certain circumstances might also be a danger point.

Immediately beneath his window was an angle of the drawing room, a circumstance that gave him cause for satisfaction. Mr. Reeder’s experience favoured a bedroom that was above a public apartment.

He went back on his tracks and came to the other end of the lawn. Those three windows, brightly curtained, were evidently Mr. Daver’s private suite. Beneath them, the wall was black, the actual stone being obscured by a thick growth of ivy. He wondered what this lightless and doorless space contained.

As he returned to the front of the house he saw Margaret Belman. She was standing in front of the doorway, shading her eyes from the sun, evidently searching her limited landscape for somebody. Seeing him, she came quickly to meet him.

“Oh, there you are!” she said, with a sigh of relief. “I wondered what had happened to you⁠—you didn’t come down to breakfast.”

She looked a little peaked, he thought. Evidently she had not rounded off the night as agreeably as he.

“I haven’t slept since I saw you,” she said, answering his unspoken question. “What happened, Mr. Reeder? Did somebody really try to get into the house⁠—a burglar?”

“I think somebody tried, and I think succeeded,” said Mr. Reeder carefully. “Burglaries happen even in⁠—um⁠—hotels, Miss⁠—um⁠—Margaret. Has Mr. Daver notified the police?”

She shook her head.

“I don’t know. He has been telephoning all the morning⁠—I went to his room just now and it was locked, but I heard his voice. And, Mr. Reeder, you didn’t tell me the terrible thing that happened the night I left London. I saw it in the newspaper this morning.”

“Terrible thing?”

J. G. Reeder was puzzled. Almost he had forgotten the adventure of the spring gun.

“Oh, you mean the little joke?”

“Joke!” she said, shocked.

“Criminals have a perverted sense of humour,” said Mr. Reeder airily. “The whole thing was⁠—um⁠—an elaborate jest designed to frighten me. One expects such things. They are the examination papers which are set to test one’s intelligence from time to time.”

“But who did it?” she asked.

Mr. Reeder’s gaze wandered absently over the placid countryside. She had a feeling that it bored him even to recall so trivial an incident in a busy life.

“Our young friend,” he said suddenly, and, following the direction of his eyes, she saw Olga Crewe.

She was wearing a dark gray knitted suit and a big black hat that shaded her face, and there was nothing of embarrassment in the half smile with which she greeted her fellow guest.

“Good morning, Mr. Reeder. I think we have met before this morning.” She rubbed her arm good-humouredly.

Mr. Reeder was all apologies.

“I don’t even know now what happened,” she said, and Margaret Belman learned for the first time what had happened before she had made her appearance.

“I never thought you were so strong⁠—look!” Olga Crewe pulled back her sleeve and showed a big blue-black patch on her forearm, cutting short his expression of remorse with a little laugh.

“Have you shown Mr. Reeder all the attractions of the estate?” she asked, a hint of sarcasm in her tone. “I almost expected to find you at the bathing pool this morning.”

“I didn’t even know there was a bathing pool,” said Mr. Reeder. “In fact, after my terrible scare last night, this⁠—um⁠—beautiful house has assumed so sinister an aspect that I expect to bathe in nothing less dramatic than blood!”

She was not amused. He saw her eyes close quickly and she shivered a little.

“How gruesome you are! Come along, Miss Belman.”

Inwardly Margaret resented the tone, which was almost a command, but she walked by their side. Clear of the house, Olga stopped and pointed.

“You must see the well. Are you interested in old things?” asked Olga, as she led the way to the shrubbery.

“I am more interested in new things, especially new experiences,” said Mr. Reeder, quite gaily. “And new people fascinate me!”

Again that quick, frightened smile of hers.

“Then you should be having the time of your life, Mr. Reeder,” she said, “for you’re meeting people here whom you’ve never met before.”

He screwed up his forehead in a frown.

“Yes, there are two people in this house I have never met before,” he said, and she looked round at him quickly.

“Only two? You’ve never met me before!”

“I’ve seen you,” said Mr. Reeder, “but I have never met you.”

By this time they had arrived at the well, and he read the inscription slowly before he tested the board that covered the top of the well with his foot.

“It has been closed for years,” said the girl. “I shouldn’t touch it,” she added hastily, as Reeder stooped and, catching the edge of the board, swung it back trap fashion, leaving an oblong cavity.

The trap did not squeak or creak as he turned it back; the hinges were oiled; there was no accumulation of dust between the two doors. Going on to his hands and knees, he looked down into the darkness.

“How many loads of rubble and rock were used to fill up this well?” he asked.

Margaret read from the little notice board.

“Hum!” said Mr. Reeder, groped in his pockets, took out a two-shilling piece, poised the silver coin carefully and let it drop.

For a long, long time he listened, and then a faint metallic tinkle came up to him.

“Nine seconds!” He looked up into Olga’s face. “Deduct from the velocity of a falling object the speed at which sound travels, and tell me how deep this hole is.”

He got to his feet, dusted the knees of his trousers, and carefully dropped the trap into position.

“Rock there may be,” he said, “but there is no water. I must work out the number of loads requisite to fill this well entirely⁠—it will be an interesting morning’s occupation for one who in his youth was something of a mathematical genius.”

Olga Crewe led the way back to the shrubbery in silence. When they came to the open: “I think you had better show Mr. Reeder the rest of the establishment,” she said. “I’m rather tired.” And with a nod, she turned away and walked toward the house.

Mr. Reeder gazed after her with something like admiration in his eyes.

“The rouge would, of course, make a tremendous difference,” he said, half speaking to himself, “but it is very difficult to disguise voices⁠—even the best of actors fail in this respect.”

Margaret stared at him.

“Are you talking to me?”

“To myself,” said Mr. Reeder humbly. “It is a bad habit of mine, peculiar to my age, I fear.”

“But Miss Crewe never uses rouge.”

“Who does⁠—in the country?” asked Mr. Reeder, and pointed with his walking stick to the wall along the cliff. “Where does that lead? What is on the other side?”

“Sudden death,” said Margaret, and laughed.

For a quarter of an hour they stood leaning on the parapet of the low wall, looking down at the strip of beach below. The small channel that led to the cave interested him. He asked her how deep it was. She thought that it was quite shallow, a conclusion with which he did not agree.

“Underground caves sound romantic, and that channel is deeper than most. I think I must explore the cave. How does one get down?”

He looked left and right. The beach was enclosed in a deep little bay, circled on one side by sheer cliff, on the other by a high reef of rock that ran far out to sea. Mr. Reeder pointed to the horizon.

“Sixty miles from here is France.”

He had a disconcerting habit of going off at a tangent.

“I think I will do a little exploring this afternoon. The walk should freshen me.”

They were returning to the house when he remembered the bathing pool and asked to see it.

“I wonder Mr. Daver doesn’t let it run dry,” Margaret said. “It is an awful expense. I was going through the municipality’s account yesterday, and they charge a fabulous sum for pumping up fresh water.”

“How long has it been built?”

“That is the surprising thing,” she said. “It was made twelve years ago, when private swimming pools were things unheard of in this country.”

The pool was oblong in shape; one end of it was tiled and obviously artificially created. The farther end, however, had for its sides and bottom natural rock. A great dome-shaped mass served as a diving platform. Mr. Reeder walked all round, gazing into the limpid water. It was deepest at the rocky end, and here he stayed longest, and his inspection was most thorough. There seemed a space⁠—how deep he could not tell⁠—at the bottom of the bath, where the rock overhung.

“Very interesting,” said Mr. Reeder at last. “I think I will go back to the house and get my bathing suit. Happily I brought one.”

“I didn’t know you were a swimmer,” smiled the girl.

“I am the merest tyro in most things,” said Mr. Reeder modestly.

He went up to his room, undressed and slipped into a bathing suit, over which he put his overcoat. Olga Crewe and Mr. Daver had gone down to Siltbury. To his satisfaction, he saw the hotel car descending the hill road cautiously in a cloud of dust.

When Mr. Reeder threw off his coat to make the plunge there was something comically ferocious in his appearance, for about his waist he had fastened a belt to which was fastened in a sheath a long-bladed hunting knife, and in addition there dangled a waterproof bag in which he had placed one of the many little hand lamps that he invariably carried about with him. He made the most human preparations: put his toes into the cold water, and shivered ecstatically before he made his plunge. Losing no time in preliminaries, he swam along the bottom to the slit in the rock which he had seen.