Part 8

"Then this Indian gentleman must be the dark man you saw go in. Have you any clue to his identity?"

"I have ascertained certain particulars concerning him. To find out who delivered the goods at Burton Crescent was my next object. It is the general custom for policemen to take the name on a van that is delivering or removing goods from a house. Many robberies have been traced in this way. The constable on duty in the neighbourhood at that time was able to tell me to whom the van belonged. I went at once to a retired police sergeant whom I frequently employ to make ordinary private inquiries, and gave him instructions to find out where the van took the goods from, and if possible what they were.

"In a few hours he sent me his report. The van had brought two cases of brandy from a firm of wine merchants; hammers, saws, nails, etc., from an ironmonger's; half a dozen large indiarubber mats, and several rolls of wire netting. All these things, it was found, had been purchased and paid for by a white-haired gentleman in gold spectacles, having the appearance of a native of India. He gave his name and address as Mr. Aleem Mohammed, No. ---, Burton Crescent."

"Well, you can soon find out who Mr. Aleem Mohammed is by the numbers of the notes he paid to the house agents. Banknotes are always useful clues."

"Mr. Aleem Mohammed has evidently thought of that," replied Dorcas. "I _have_ traced the notes. They were obtained at a money-changer's at Charing Cross, by a gentleman answering to our Indian friend's description. He gave sovereigns for them. I have also been to the house agents. The house was let to Mr. Aleem Mohammed, who had paid a year's rent in advance in bank-notes, having no one in this country to whom he could refer."

"Don't you think," I said, after a pause, "the whole business may be capable of a very simple explanation? After all, Barraclough hailed a cab from the doorstep, and the cab drove him direct to his own residence. Would he, if he were mixed up in any crime in connection with this house, establish a direct trail?"

"I have been thinking that out myself," replied Dorcas; "but I am inclined to believe it was one of those slips that very cunning people do make occasionally. Coming out late at night, there was nobody about, and he hailed a cab barely thinking what he was doing, and said, 'Berkeley Square.' He stopped it as his own door with his umbrella mechanically, as one is in the habit of doing."

"And the Indian gentleman?"

"I believe is Barraclough. He is a dark man, browned with the sun of South America. He could easily carry a white wig and a false moustache and a pair of gold spectacles in a Gladstone bag coming out of the house at night. When he goes into it in the daylight as the Indian he can have that light overcoat and his flower in the same bag."

"But the night we saw him he had no bag."

"No; but he might easily have had the wig and moustache in his overcoat pocket. At any rate, I am pretty sure that Aleem Mohammed and Judkins Barraclough are the same person."

"That is your theory, but you may be wrong."

"Of course--I am not infallible."

The cab stopped suddenly. We had reached Mabledon Place, where the man had orders to pull up. We got out and Dorcas gave him instructions to wait for us where he was, saying we might be a couple of hours or more.

Taking the black bag with us, we made our way towards the Crescent, which was quite deserted. Dorcas took her goloshes out of the bag and put them on, and handed me mine, just as we got close to the house. Glancing round to see no one was about, she went noiselessly up the steps and tried the latchkeys. The first did not fit. It was probably the key of Berkeley Square. The second, to our intense relief, fitted perfectly. In a moment we were inside the hall and had closed the door noiselessly behind us.

Dorcas, taking the dark lantern from her belt, struck a silent match and lighted the wick.

The hall was bare, the stairs were uncarpeted, the whole atmosphere of the house suggested that it was uninhabited.

The keys were on the outside of the doors of the two rooms on the ground floor.

We opened the door of the front parlour. It was quite bare. Dorcas looked about it in every direction.

Then she turned the tap of the gas on. There was no sound.

"Gas cut off and meter taken away when last tenant left," said Dorcas. "The occupant must have used candles or a lamp."

"There's nothing in that," I said. "A good many people prefer them."

"Quite so. _I_ hope he used candles. But let us have a peep at the next room."

Dorcas went first and opened the door of the back parlour.

The room was empty.

Dorcas looked carefully round it, then turned the light of the bull's-eye to the floor. Suddenly she stooped down.

"He's used this room," she said; "see, here is the tallow trail."

She pointed to some small blobs of tallow grease near the doors of a cupboard, which was in one corner of the room.

"He has used candles here," she said. "The candle has stood some time on the floor and guttered. That was while the person who had been carrying it was busy with both hands inside this cupboard."

The cupboard was locked, but the lock was a paltry one, and drawing a little instrument from the bag Dorcas soon had it open.

"How odd to take the trouble to lock up such rubbish as this!" exclaimed Dorcas, drawing out a bundle of ragged female clothing.

I stared at the articles as Dorcas held them up.

"Good gracious!" I said. "These are the clothes of some wretched creature who must have been in the last stage of poverty. The dress is ragged and mud-stained, the old red flannel petticoat almost in ribbons, the bonnet battered and black with grease. Faugh! put the things down."

Dorcas was not inclined to abandon her find so readily, but presently she put the rags slowly back in the cupboard. "I wonder what he's done with the body?" she said quietly.

I must confess that when Dorcas said that, I had an uncomfortable, creepy sensation. Could it be possible that such a wretched creature as these locked-up rags had once belonged to had been done to death in an empty house by the millionaire of Berkeley Square?

Dorcas must have divined my thoughts. "Are you wondering if the body of the woman who wore these things is concealed on the premises?" she said.

"Something of the sort was in my mind."

"And I don't know what to think," said Dorcas. "If the body is buried, why on earth were not these accusing rags buried with it?"

We went downstairs, and as we walked through the silent, deserted passages of the basement, I felt suspiciously uncomfortable. A rat ran squeaking behind the wainscot, and I am ashamed to say that in my overwrought nervous condition I couldn't help giving a little cry of alarm.

I tried to excuse my cowardice to Dorcas, but she stopped me.

"Don't apologise," she said. "I am a great deal more afraid of rats than I am of human beings."

We had passed into the back kitchen or scullery.

"He has been here," she said.

"How do you know?"

"By the tallow trail. The guttering candle has left its traces here."

She pointed out three blobs of tallow on the edge of the sink, and turned the light of the bull's-eye full on the trap. Then she passed her hand carefully over the surface and drew it away. A few exceedingly small damp atoms of pulpy water adhered to her palm. Dorcas examined the atoms carefully. "Probably red on one side and white on the other," she said. "I wonder where the bottles are?"

"What bottles?"

There were two short wooden shelves on each side of the sink. From the one on the left-hand side Dorcas took a chisel. It was evidently new, by the handle, but the edge was slightly rusty.

"The bottles that the labels have been scraped from with this chisel," she said. "The labels have been damped at the sink. It is the wet on the label that has rusted the chisel."

Suddenly she stooped down, and let the lantern flash round the room. Something among some rubbish in one corner attracted her attention. It was a small empty bottle, about the size of the bottles in which chemists sell toothache tincture. She picked the bottle up and examined it carefully.

"It has been washed out," she said, "and there is nothing to tell us what it contained."

"Does it matter?" I exclaimed. "It is hardly likely that Mr. Judkins Barraclough came here to wash bottles. That may have been done by the former tenants."

"No, bottles have been scraped here recently. Fragments of the pulped paper are still in the sink, and that chisel is probably one of the tools that the Indian gentleman ordered from the ironmonger's."

"Well, whatever the bottle contained we can't find it out here," I said.

"No, let's go into the front kitchen."

In the front kitchen there were two cupboards and a kitchen dresser. The cupboards were not quite empty--on one shelf was a packet of coffee and a bag of sugar. On the kitchen dresser was a brown paper package open at one end. It contained eleven boxes of ordinary matches--the twelfth half empty, was lying on one of the dresser shelves.

"The coffee bothers me," said Dorcas, "but the matches show that this is where the bottle washer lighted his candles of an evening. The candles themselves can't be far off."

She looked at the dresser drawers. They had round wooden painted handles. She turned the light of the bull's-eye on to each handle. Then she touched the handle of the top left-hand drawer.

"This is one he uses," she said.

"How can you tell that?" I said, gazing curiously on the handle, and failing to see any indication which could have guided Dorcas in her selection.

"Look at this handle carefully," she said, "and you will see a tiny atom of paper still adhering to it. The person who washed bottles has come from the sink with a wet hand and opened that drawer. A scrap of the label has adhered to his hand and come off on the drawer handle, as he grasped it to pull it open. And now I am sure that the person who washed the bottles and opened this drawer was Mr. Judkins Barraclough."

I stared at Dorcas in amazement. "How can the drawer handle tell you that?" I exclaimed.

"You remember that Barraclough's right arm was evidently too painful to use, and he was using his left the night we saw him get out of the cab. Well, the rusty chisel was thrown after use on the left-hand side of the sink, and here the drawer has been pulled open with the left hand."

"Surely a left hand doesn't mark itself on a drawer handle."

"No, but this drawer stuck and was difficult to open. The person trying it rested one hand--a wet and dirty one--on the dresser. See, here are five dirty finger-marks on the _right-hand_ side of the drawer."

I looked where Dorcas had pointed, and indications were undoubtedly there. Dorcas had some difficulty in pulling the drawer open, and had to rest her own hand on the dresser. She tried with her left hand, and her right hand then fell exactly on the finger-marks.

When the drawer at last yielded we looked eagerly inside it. There were two packets of common candles and back in the corner of the drawer half a dozen small bottles similar to the one we had found empty in the sink.

Dorcas drew them out and examined them carefully. "All red labels, you see, with 'Poison' printed on them, 'Hydrate of Chloral' written above. They have all been purchased from different chemists--though one doesn't have to sign for chloral. Mr. Judkins Barraclough is using chloral for some purpose in this house, and after each bottle is used he removes the label."

"Why should he do that?"

"Well, he may not think it wise to leave empty labelled chloral bottles about. He is a cunning man, and is guarding against contingencies."

"But what can he be doing with chloral here--in an empty house?"

"We may find out before we leave it. At any rate, let us see if he uses any of the upper rooms."

"We haven't searched the coal cellar yet," I said, suddenly recollecting the Euston-square mystery, and the discovery of the corpse of the poor "Canterbury Belle."

"To get to the coal cellar you have to go out into the area in these houses," replied Dorcas. "He wouldn't do that."

"The wine cellar, then?"

Dorcas shook her head. "I looked at the door of that as we came by. It was ajar. If there was anything to conceal there it would be shut and locked."

"But the cases of brandy----"

"May be there--we'll go and see."

The wine cellar was small and filled with old rubbish evidently left behind by the last tenants.

But the brandy cases were there. One was opened and the lid off. There were only six bottles left. The straw envelopes of the other six lay on the floor.

"Where are the empty bottles?" I said. "We ought to look for them."

"Yes--that is what we will do next. I have an idea they are upstairs."

"Why?"

"As we came down the kitchen stairs I noticed a short straw lying on one of them. When the bottle was being taken out of the straw envelope in the cellar a loose straw or two caught on the clothes of the person handling it. As he went up the stairs the straw became disengaged by the action of walking and fell. We've searched the parlours carefully--now let us go upstairs to the first floor."

There were two doors on the first floor. We tried the front room one first and found it unlocked and the room quite empty.

"Now for the back room," said Dorcas.

We went out on to the landing and tried the back room door. _It was locked._

"If there is anything more to be found it will be here," exclaimed Dorcas, her face, which had been pale until now, suddenly flushing with excitement.

"What can we do?--burst the door open?"

"Yes--I came prepared for emergencies."

Dorcas produced an instrument which is technically known as a "jemmy" from her bag and handed it to me.

I had once burst open a door, but I was not a skilled workman, so it was a good ten minutes before the door yielded, bursting open with a crash and tearing away with it a portion of the lock, which fell with a clatter to the ground.

As the door fell it seemed as though there was an echo of it downstairs.

"What's that?" exclaimed Dorcas. "It sounded like the front door shutting."

"Nonsense," I said, "it's the echo--the house is empty."

Dorcas had turned her lantern on the staircase, and was peering over the balustrade. All was silent as the grave.

"I must have been mistaken," she said. "Good heavens, there can't have been someone in the house all this time--someone who has slipped past us and escaped. If I thought that I----"

She paused and uttered a little cry. She had turned the lantern right round, and it lit up the room, the door of which we had just burst open.

As the light of the bull's-eye dimly illuminated the apartment an extraordinary sight met our eyes. The centre of the room was entirely occupied by what looked like a huge wire cage. Wire netting nearly six feet high was stretched from side to side of the room on ropes which were fastened in the walls by iron rings. Across the inside, at the top and bottom of what was practically a wired-off passage was wire netting of the same height securely fixed and lashed firmly in its place, and to prevent the occupant of the cage from climbing over the top it was roofed in with a double thickness of coarse sacking securely fastened to the wirework. The floor was covered with indiarubber mats nailed down to keep them in place.

"Good gracious!" I exclaimed. "Is it a menagerie, or a cage for some wild animal, or what?"

Suddenly Dorcas grasped my arm, and put her finger to her lips. In one corner of the cage, on a rug, covered over by a scarlet blanket, lay a woman.

"She must be dead!" I exclaimed, starting back with horror. "Only a corpse could sleep through the crash of that door."

"No," said Dorcas, creeping up close to the wire netting. "She is breathing--see, the blanket rises and falls."

"What can it mean? Is she some mad woman whom Barraclough is keeping here?"

Dorcas did not answer. She was gazing earnestly at the face of the sleeper. It was the face of a woman of about forty--a dark woman who must once have been strikingly handsome. Dorcas let the light fall upon it for a minute or two, but the sleeper made no movement. Her breathing was strangely heavy. Suddenly Dorcas touched my arm and pointed to an open bottle which stood near the rug.

"Brandy," she said. "That's where the six bottles have gone to."

"Is she in a drunken stupor, do you think?"

"Drunken, perhaps, is hardly the word," replied Dorcas; "you forget the empty chloral bottles."

"You think that the chloral is for her?"

"Yes; this woman is under the influence of it now. A man or a woman who takes chloral would sleep through an earthquake. A drunken man or woman would certainly have been startled by the noise we made just now. In some mysterious way she has been got into this house, and is being kept here a prisoner by Mr. Judkins Barraclough. He probably dissolves a dose of chloral and puts it into each bottle of brandy he brings to the poor creature."

"What can be the object of that?"

"The chloral is given, I take it, with the same object as this wire cage has been built around her (probably while she lay helpless and insensible under the influence of the drug)--to keep her from making a noise, shouting or beating against the walls, or going to the windows and attracting the attention of the neighbours. The man who has got this woman in his power comes here daily, but probably only after dark, and has to leave her alone at night and for many hours during the day. She is caged in to keep her from beating the walls, and she is dosed with chloral in order to keep her from moving about or making the slightest noise."

"And the object?"

"To let her kill herself with the brandy."

"Then why the chloral?--that sends her to sleep and prevents her from drinking as much as she would."

"If she were left with the brandy alone she would become violent and be able to shriek. She might in an access of delirium tear down her cage and get free. No--kept here without food and with a plentiful supply of brandy she will die slowly of alcoholic poisoning. But she must die quietly--hence the chloral."

"What an infamous villain!"

"Yes, and a desperate one. This is the woman who bit him that night. There must have been a violent struggle after he got her here. This woman is probably his first wife. There cannot be any other reason for Mr. Barraclough's mysterious proceedings."

"But now we have found her," I exclaimed, "what do you propose to do?"

"We must break through this netting, and try to rouse her first," replied Dorcas. "Her gaoler doesn't go near her--see here is where he evidently picks up the corner of the network to put in the bottles of drugged brandy. The nail has been pulled out and hammered in again several times."

Dorcas went to the shutters, which were closed, and wrenched off the iron bar. "Take this," she said, "and break the netting down sufficiently for us to get in. It will make less noise than forcing out the staples."

I took the bar, and several violent blows broke the lower portion of the cage loose from the fastenings in the floor. Then I pulled it up sufficiently high to allow Dorcas to crawl underneath.

"This must be the woman whose clothes are downstairs in the cupboard," I said. "Fancy a woman reduced to such poverty as that-- the wife of a millionaire. Why, she must have been a homeless outcast."

Dorcas had gone to the sleeping woman's side. Gently she turned down the top of the scarlet blanket. Then she started back in astonishment. The woman was fully dressed in clothes of the best quality.

Dorcas lifted the almost lifeless arm from the sleeper's side and pointed to her fingers. On one was a worn wedding-ring, and above it a diamond ring. A gold bangle set with jewels was round her wrist.

"What does it mean?" said Dorcas, knitting her brows. "The rags concealed in the cupboard downstairs never belonged to _this_ woman."

At that moment a church clock struck five.

"Quick!" cried Dorcas, thrusting Mr. Barraclough's keys through the broken wirework into my hand. "You must go. The cab will be waiting in Mabledon Place. Go to Berkeley Square at once and put the keys in the letter-box. I wouldn't have that man suspect anything for all the money in the world!"

"And you?"

"I shall stay here. Come back as soon as you can. Ring the bell gently and I will let you in. Ah! wait a moment!"

She tore a leaf from her note-book, and scribbled something in lead pencil, then folded it, and gave it to me. It was addressed to a doctor in Endsleigh Gardens.

"It's close by; call there on your way. Ring the doctor up and give him this. He is an old friend of mine and will come at once. Then go to Berkeley Square as fast as the horse can take you, and put the keys in the letter-box."

There was nothing for it but to obey. When I closed the door of No. --- softly behind me it was broad daylight, and the birds were singing gaily in the trees.

As I reached the pavement I involuntarily turned back to take a parting glance at the closely shuttered house in which I had left Dorcas Dene alone with the caged woman.

As I did so I suddenly became aware of something which rooted me to the spot, and paralysed me beyond the power of uttering a cry.

Crouching in the shadow of the next doorway was a dark man with white hair, a closely-cropped white moustache, and gold spectacles.

_IX. THE CLOTHES IN THE CUPBOARD_

I stood for a moment paralysed. Could it be possible that standing there watching me as I emerged from the house in Burton Crescent was the mysterious Indian whom Dorcas Dene believed to be no other than Judkins Barraclough himself? Judkins Barraclough in a false wig and a moustache and a pair of gold spectacles.

Then suddenly I recollected the sound we had heard as of the shutting of the front door. Someone _had_ been in the house at the time. Someone had slipped past when we were in the front room, and as the door of the room in which the drugged woman lay yielded with a crash, that person had crept out into the street.

And that person was the man with the white hair and moustache, whose dark eyes were gleaming at me through his gold spectacles now.

What was I to do? To seize the Indian and call for the police? I hesitated to do that without Dorcas's authority. I went up the step of No. ---, and rang the bell gently.

In a moment I heard Dorcas's voice saying, "Who's there?"

"Openly quickly!" I exclaimed. "It is I."

The door opened and I dashed into the hall and gasped out that the Indian was there--outside--what should I do?

Dorcas frowned. "There was someone in the house, then!" she exclaimed "Oh, if I had only known it! But go to the doctor at once, and then get back with those keys."

"And the Indian?"

"Will probably get at Judkins Barraclough at the earliest opportunity and warn him."

"You don't think the Indian is Barraclough disguised, now, then?"

"No--that's impossible. I've been off the track a little, but I'm on it right enough now. Get away now, every minute is of value."

Dorcas shut the door and I went down the steps again.

I looked about for the Indian. While I was talking to Dorcas he had slipped out of the doorway and disappeared. I found the cab waiting, drove to the doctor in Endsleigh Gardens, left the note, and then told the cabman to drive me with all speed to the top of Berkeley Square.

It was half-past five when I slipped the keys quietly into Mr. Barraclough's letter box. It was six o'clock when the cab stopped again in Mabledon Place.

There were one or two people passing through the Crescent--people on the way to work. Outside some of the houses sleepy-looking girls were shaking the mats and beginning the household duties of the day.

A policeman passed me and bade me good morning. I returned his salutation and walked past No. --- to the end of the Crescent. When I looked round he had sauntered away, and I returned and rang the bell.