Part 20 (1/2)

”They've opened a place under the floor, across there,” explained the doctor, pointing to the corner where the carpet was still laid back from the boards.

She raised herself quickly upon her elbow and glanced in the direction indicated, staring straight at the spot with a look of terror in her eyes. No word escaped her lips. Her jaws seemed again fixed, her breath held, her fingers clenched into the palms.

She realised that the secret hiding-place had been discovered.

”What have they taken?” she gasped, in a low, terrified tone, when at last she found tongue.

”Apparently everything,” I replied. ”The place is empty.”

”Empty!” she echoed, raising herself to her feet with an effort, but reeling unsteadily back to the couch, for her head was still swimming after the effects of the chloroform. ”The fiends!” she cried.

”And poor Jane. How is she?”

”I much regret, madam, that the chloroform administered to her has had a fatal effect,” said the doctor, gravely.

”Dead! Jane dead?”

”Yes. They've killed her,” declared the inspector. ”It's wilful murder, that's what it is, mum. Therefore, if you can give us any information as to who these ruffians may be we'll be very glad. We must arrest them at all costs. Who do you think they might be?”

But Mrs Parham, although a strange look crossed her white, haggard features, made no response to the officer's question.

”Poor Jane! Poor Jane--the brutes!” she kept on repeating, her wild eyes staring across to where the body of the dead maid-servant was lying.

From her manner I felt convinced that she suspected who the intruders were, now that she knew that their motive had been to search in that secret cavity beneath the floor of the drawing-room, and possess themselves of something concealed there.

Would she denounce them?

The inspector again questioned her, but her answers were evasive.

”My husband is in the country,” she explained. ”He is very often away, for his business often takes him on the Continent, to Paris and Amsterdam.”

”But how do you think these men got into the house?” the officer asked.

”I notice that the inner gla.s.s door of the hall closes with a latch which can only be opened from the inside. Therefore, if they had entered the front door with a false key they could not have pa.s.sed the inner door.”

This fact was interesting, and one which I had entirely overlooked.

”I have no idea how they could have entered. Perhaps by a window.”

”Or perhaps by the servants' entrance,” Lane suggested.

”They couldn't have got in that way, mum, because they'd have to pa.s.s through the kitchen, and cook was there all the time. Besides, we're always very careful that that door is never left ajar.”

”It's evident that they were concealed in the house,” I remarked, recollecting that tall shadowy figure that had crossed the room on tip-toe at the instant that the blind had been lowered.

”Of course,” agreed the inspector. ”But what we want to know is whether this lady has any suspicion of anyone to whose advantage it would be to obtain possession of what was concealed there.”

”I don't know what was in there,” she declared, in a weak, nervous voice. ”My husband made the place himself a few months ago, as he often has valuable jewellery here. In the City he has a strong room, of course, but here he deemed it best to make a secret hiding-place rather than have a fire-proof safe, which is always discussed by servants, and the knowledge of which in a private house so soon becomes common property.”

”Then he used to keep valuables there?” asked the inspector.