The Door with Seven Locks · Chapter 4 (2/2)

“Send a man to pick up Pheeney and bring him here. I want to ask him a few questions,” he said. And then, calling the man back: “You know his address, Dick. Go along and see if you can unearth him.”

“My term of service expires at twelve today.”

“Midnight,” said Sneed laconically. “Get busy!”

Lew Pheeney lived in Great Queen Street, at a lodging he had occupied for years; but his landlady could give no information. Pheeney had left the previous afternoon somewhere about five and had not returned. A haunt of the burglar was a small club, extensively patronized by the queer class which hovers eternally on the rim of the law. Pheeney had not been there⁠—he usually came in to breakfast and to collect his letters.

Dick saw a man who said he had had an engagement with Pheeney on the previous night, and that he had waited until twelve.

“Where am I likely to find him?”

Here, however, no information was forthcoming. Dick Martin’s profession was as well known as Mr. Pheeney’s.

He reported the result of his visits to Sneed, who for some reason took a more serious view of the whole matter than Dick had expected.

“I’m believing it now, that grave-robbing story,” said Sneed, “and certainly it’s remarkable if Lew was upset, because nothing short of an earthquake would raise a squeal with him. Maybe he’s at your flat?”

When Dick got home the flat was empty. His housekeeper had neither seen nor heard from the visitor. The detective strolled into his bedroom, pulled off his coat, intending to put on the old shooting jacket he wore when he was writing⁠—for he had a number of reports to finish before he made his final exit from the Yard.

The coat was not hanging up where it was usually kept, and he remembered that his housekeeper had told him that she had put it in the bureau: a tall piece of mahogany furniture where his four suits were invariably hung on hangers.

Without a thought he turned the handle of the bureau door and pulled it open. As he did so, the body of a man fell against him, almost knocking him over, and dropped to the floor with an inanimate thud. It was Lew Pheeney, and he was dead.