The Shrieking Pit Part 33

Colwyn rejoined his companions, and told them what had pa.s.sed.

"I want to be on the safe side in case Benson tries to bolt when he sees us," he explained. "He's hardly likely to go without making an effort to get the money. Now, let us go to the inn."

"One moment," said the chief constable. "How do you propose to proceed when we get there?"

"Get Benson by himself and frighten him into a confession," was the terse reply. "I want your authority to threaten him with arrest. In fact, I should prefer that you or Superintendent Galloway undertook to do that. It would come with more force."

"Let it be Galloway," responded the chief constable. "You will act just as if I were not present, Galloway, and it is my wish that you do whatever Mr. Colwyn asks you."

"Thank you," replied the detective. "Let us go, now. There is no time to be lost. Somebody may have seen me speaking to Queensmead."

They descended the rise and, reaching the flat, discerned the gaunt walls of the old inn looming spectrally from the mist. A light glimmered in the bar, and loud voices were heard within. Colwyn felt for the door. It was shut and fastened. He knocked sharply; the voices within ceased as though by magic, and presently there was the sound of somebody coming along the pa.s.sage. Then the door was opened, and the white face of Charles appeared in the doorway, framed in the yellow light of a candle which he held above his head as he peered forth into the mist. His black eyes roved from Colwyn to the forms behind him.

"I'm sorry you were kept waiting, sir," he said, in his strange whisper, which seemed to have a tremor in it. "But the customers will have the door locked at night now. They are frightened of this ghost-this White Lady-she's been heard shrieking--"

"Never mind that now," replied Colwyn. He had determined how to act, and stepped quickly inside. "Where's Benson?"

"He's sitting upstairs with his mother, sir. Shall I tell him you want him?"

"No. I will go myself. Take these gentlemen into the bar parlour, and return to the bar."

Colwyn made his way upstairs in the dark. He pa.s.sed the rooms where Mr. Glenthorpe had been murdered and Penreath had slept, and the room from which he had watched Peggy's nocturnal visit to the death chamber. That wing of the inn was as empty and silent as it had been the night of the murder, but a lighted candle, placed on an old hall stand which Colwyn remembered having seen that night in the lumber room, flickered in the wavering shadows-a futile human effort to ward off the lurking terrors of darkness by the friendly feeble companionship of a light which could be extinguished even more quickly than a life.

Colwyn took the candle to light him down the second pa.s.sage to the mad woman's room. As he reached it, the door opened, and Peggy stepped forth. She recoiled at the sight of the detective.

"You!" she breathed. "Oh, why--"

"I have come to see your father," said Colwyn. It went to his heart to see the entreaty in her eyes, the pitiful droop of her lips and the thinness of her face.

The door was opened widely, and the innkeeper appeared on the threshold beside his daughter. Behind him, Colwyn could see the old mad woman in her bed in the corner of the room, mumbling to herself and fondling her doll. The innkeeper fastened his bird-like eyes on the detective's face.

"What are you doing here?" he said, and there was no mistaking the note of terror in his voice. "What is it you want?"

"I want to speak to you downstairs," said the detective.

The innkeeper looked swiftly to the right and left with the instinct of a trapped animal seeking an avenue of escape. Then his eyes returned to the detective's face with the resigned glance of a man who had made up his mind.

"I will come down with you," he said. "Peggy, you must look after your grandmother till I return."

The girl went back into the room and shut the door behind her, without a word or a glance. Once more Colwyn felt admiration for her as a rare type of woman-hood. Truly, she had self-control, this girl.

He and the innkeeper took their way along the pa.s.sages and descended the stairs without exchanging a word. When they got to the foot of the stairs Benson half hesitated, and turned to Colwyn as if for direction. The latter nodded towards the door of the bar parlour, and motioned the innkeeper to enter. Following closely behind, he saw the innkeeper start with surprise at the sight of the two inmates of the room. Mr. Cromering was seated at the table, but Superintendent Galloway was standing up with his back to the fireplace. There was a moment's tense silence before the latter spoke.

"We have sent for you to ask you a few questions, Benson."

"I was under the impression-that is, I was led to believe-that it was Mr. Colwyn who wanted to see me."

"Never mind what you thought," retorted Galloway impatiently. "You know perfectly well what has brought us here. I'm going to ask you some questions about the murder which was committed in this inn less than three weeks ago."

"I know nothing about it, sir, beyond what I told you before."

"You will be well advised, in your own interests, not to lie, Benson. Why did you not tell us you had a second key to Mr. Glenthorpe's room?"

There was a perceptible pause before the reply came.

"I didn't think it mattered, sir."

"Then you admit you have a second key?"

"Yes, sir."

"Very well." Superintendent Galloway took out a pocket-book and made a note of the reply. "Now, where did you conceal the money?"

"What money, sir?"

"Don't equivocate, man!" Superintendent Galloway produced the pocket-book Colwyn had recovered from the pit, and held it at arm's length in front of the innkeeper. "I mean the 300 in Treasury notes in this pocket-book, which Mr. Glenthorpe drew from the bank, and which you took from his room the night he was murdered."

"I know nothing about it."

To Colwyn at least it seemed that the expression on the innkeeper's face as he glanced at the pocket-book might have been mistaken by an unprejudiced observer for genuine surprise.

"I suppose you never saw it before, eh?" sneered Galloway.

"I never did."

"Nor hid it in the pit?"

"No, sir."

Galloway paused in his questioning in secret perplexity. Benson's answers to his last three questions were given so firmly and unhesitatingly that some of his former doubts of Colwyn's theory returned to him with redoubled force. But it was in his most truculent and overbearing manner that he next remarked:

"Do you also deny that you carried Mr. Glenthorpe's body from his room and threw it down the pit?"

The spasm of sudden terror which contorted the innkeeper's face was a revelation to the three men who were watching him closely.

"I don't know anything about it," he quavered weakly.

"That won't go down, Benson!" Galloway was quick to follow up his stroke, shaking his head fiercely, like a dog worrying a rat. "You were seen carrying the body downstairs, the night of the murder. You might as well own up to it, first as last. Lies will not help you. We know too much for you to wriggle out of it. And never mind smoothing your hair down like that. We know all about that scar on your forehead, and how you got it."

A wooden clock, standing on the mantelpiece, measured off half a minute in heavy ticks. Then the innkeeper, in a voice which was little more than a whisper, spoke:

"It is true. I carried the body downstairs."

"Why did you not tell us this before?"

"It would not have made any difference."

"What!" Superintendent Galloway's indignation and amazement threatened to choke his utterance. "You keep silence till an innocent man is almost hanged for your misdeeds, and now have the brazen effrontery to say it makes no difference."