The Secret House Part 29

She let herself in through the little door placed under the green-covered porch.

"You can unharness the horse; I shall be here two hours," she said to the waiting Brown.

The man touched his hat. He was used to these excursions and was possessed of the patience of his cla.s.s. He backed the victoria on to the moor by the side of the fence which surrounded the house. There was a little stable at the back, but it was never used. He unharnessed the horse, fixed his nosebag, and sat down to read his favourite newspaper; a little journal which dealt familiarly with the erratic conduct of the upper cla.s.ses. He was not a quick reader, and there was sufficient in the gossipy journal to occupy his attention for three or four hours. At the end of an hour he thought he heard his lady's voice calling him, and jumping up, he walked to the door of the cottage.

He listened, but there was no other sound, and he came back to his previous position, and continued his study of the decadent aristocracy.

Four hours he waited, and a.s.sailed by a most human hunger, his patience was pardonably exhausted.

He rose slowly, harnessed the horse, and drove the victoria ostentatiously before the window of the little sitting-room which Lady Constance Dex used as a study. Another half an hour pa.s.sed without any response, and he got down from his box and knocked at the door.

There was no answer; he knocked again; still no reply.

In alarm he went to the window and peered in. The floor was strewn with papers scattered in confusion. A chair had been overturned. More to the point, he saw an overturned inkpot, which was eloquent to his ordered mind of an unusual happening.

Increasingly alarmed, he put his shoulder to the door, but it did not yield. He tried the window; it was locked.

It was at that moment that a motor came swiftly over the hill from the direction of the rectory. With a jar it came to a sudden stop before the house, and T. B. Smith leapt out.

Brown had seen the detective before on his visits to the rectory, and now hailed him as veritably G.o.d-sent.

"Where is Lady Constance?" asked T. B., quickly.

The man pointed to the house with trembling finger.

"She's in there somewhere," he said, fretfully, "but I can't make her answer ... and the room appears to be very disordered."

He led the way to the window. T. B. looked in and saw that which confirmed his worst fears.

"Stand back," he said.

He raised his ebony stick and sent it smashing through the gla.s.s. In a second his hand was inside unlocking the latch of the window; a few seconds later he was in the room itself. He pa.s.sed swiftly from room to room, but there was no sign of Lady Constance. On the floor of the study was a piece of lace collar, evidently wrenched from her gown.

"Hullo!" said Ela, who had followed him. He pointed to the table. On a sheet of paper was the print of a b.l.o.o.d.y palm.

"Farrington," said T. B., briefly, "he has been here; but how did he get out?"

He questioned the coachman closely, but the man was emphatic.

"No, sir," he said, "it would have been impossible for anybody to have pa.s.sed out of here without my seeing them. Not only could I see the cottage from where I sat, but the whole of the hillside."

"Is there any other place where she could be?"

"There is the outhouse," said Brown, after a moment's thought; "we used to put up the victoria there, but we never use it nowadays in fine weather."

The outhouse consisted of a large coachhouse and a small stable. There was no lock to the doors, T. B. noticed, and he pulled them open wide.

There was a heap of straw in one corner, kept evidently as a provision against the need of the visiting coachman. T. B. stepped into the outhouse, then suddenly with a cry he leant down, and caught a figure by the collar and swung him to his feet.

"Will you kindly explain what you are doing here?" he asked, and then gave a gasp of astonishment, for the sleepy-eyed prisoner in his hands was Frank Doughton.

"It is a curious story you tell me," said T. B.

"I admit it is curious," said Frank, with a smile, "and I am so sleepy that I do not know how much I have told you, and how much I have imagined."

"You told me," recapitulated T. B., "that you were kidnapped last night in London, that you were carried through London and into the country in an unknown direction, and that you made your escape from the motor-car by springing out in the early hours of this morning, whilst the car was going at a slackened speed."

"That is it," said the other. "I have not the slightest idea where I am; perhaps you can tell me?"

"You are near Great Bradley," said T. B., with a smile. "I wonder you do not recognize your home; for home it is, as I understand."

Frank looked round with astonished eyes.

"What were they bringing me here for?" he demanded.

"That remains to be discovered," replied T. B.; "my own impression is that you----"

"Do you think I was being taken to the Secret House?" interrupted the young man, suddenly.

T. B. shook his head.

"I should think that was unlikely. I suspect our friend Poltavo of having carried out this little coup entirely on his own. I further suspect his having brought the car in this direction with no other object than to throw suspicion upon our worthy friends across the hill--and how did you come to the outhouse?"

"I was dead beat," explained Frank. "I had a sudden spasm of strength which enabled me to out-distance those people who were pursuing me, but after I had shaken them off I felt that I could drop. I came upon this cottage, which seemed the only habitation in view, and after endeavouring to waken the occupants I did the next best thing, I made my way into the coachhouse and fell asleep."

T. B. had no misgivings so far as this story was concerned; he accepted it as adding only another obstacle to the difficulties of his already difficult task.

"You heard no sound whilst you lay there?"

"None whatever," said the young man.

"No sound of a struggle, I mean," said T. B., and then it was that he explained to Frank Doughton the extraordinary disappearance of the owner of Moor Cottage.

"She must be in the house," said Frank.

They went back and resumed their search. Upstairs was a bedroom, and adjoining a bath-room. On the ground floor were two rooms: the study he had quitted and a smaller room beautifully decorated and containing a piano. But the search was fruitless; Lady Constance Dex had disappeared as though the earth had opened and swallowed her up. There was no sign of a trap in the whole of the little building, and T. B. was baffled.

"It is a scientific axiom," he said, addressing Ela with a thoughtful glint in his eye, "that matter must occupy s.p.a.ce, therefore Lady Constance Dex must be in existence, she cannot have evaporated into thin air, and I am not going to leave this place until I find her."

Ela was thinking deeply, and frowning at the untidiness of the table.

"Do you remember that locket which you found on one of the dead men in Brakely Square?" he asked suddenly.

T. B. nodded. He put his hand in his waistcoat pocket, for he had carried that locket ever since the night of its discovery.

"Let us have a look at the inscription again," said Ela.

They drew up chairs to the table and examined the little circular label which they had found in the battered interior.