Part 5 (1/2)
[Ill.u.s.tration: SANFORD QUEST IS CALLED UPON TO CLEAR THE MYSTERY OF THE MURDER OF LORD ASHLEIGH'S DAUGHTER.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: UNDER THE HYPNOTIC INFLUENCE OF QUEST, LENORA REVEALS THE STRANGE DISAPPEARANCE OF THE JEWELS, AND THE MURDER.]
”I may go now, then?” she repeated, with immense relief.
Quest escorted the girl downstairs, opened the front door, blew his whistle and his car pulled up at the door.
”Take this young lady,” he ordered, ”wherever she wishes. Good night!”
The girl drove off. Quest watched the car disappear around the corner.
Then he turned slowly back and made preparations for his adventure....
”Number 700, New York,” he muttered, half an hour later, as he left his house. ”Beyond Fourteenth Street--a tough neighbourhood.”
He hesitated for a moment, feeling the articles in his overcoat pocket--a revolver in one, a small piece of hard substance in the other. Then he stepped into his car, which had just returned.
”Where did you leave the young lady?” he asked the chauffeur.
”In Broadway, sir. She left me and boarded a cross-town car.”
Quest nodded approvingly.
”No finesse,” he sighed.
5.
Sanford Quest was naturally a person unaffected by presentiments or nervous fears of any sort, yet, having advanced a couple of yards along the hallway of the house which he had just entered without difficulty, he came to a standstill, oppressed with the sense of impending danger. With his electric torch he carefully surveyed the dilapidated staircase in front of him, the walls from which the paper hung down in depressing-looking strips. The house was, to all appearances, uninhabited.
The door had yielded easily to his master-key. Yet this was the house connected with Number 700, New York, the house to which Lenora had come.
Furthermore, from the street outside he had seen a light upon the first floor, instantly extinguished as he had climbed the steps.
”Any one here?” he asked, raising his voice a little.
There was no direct response, yet from somewhere upstairs he heard the half smothered cry of a woman. He gripped his revolver in his fingers. He was a fatalist, and although for a moment he regretted having come single-handed to such an obvious trap, he prepared for his task. He took a quick step forward. The ground seemed to slip from beneath his feet. He staggered wildly to recover himself, and failed. The floor had given from beneath him. He was falling into blackness....
The fall itself was scarcely a dozen feet. He picked himself up, his shoulder bruised, his head swimming a little. His electric torch was broken to pieces upon the stone floor. He was simply in a black gulf of darkness. Suddenly a gleam of light shone down. A trap-door above his head was slid a few inches back. The flare of an electric torch shone upon his face, a man's mocking voice addressed him.
”Not the great Sanford Quest? This surely cannot be the greatest detective in the world walking so easily into the spider's web!”
”Any chance of getting out?” Quest asked laconically.
”None!” was the bitter reply. ”You've done enough mischief. You're there to rot!”
”Why this animus against me, my friend Macdougal?” Quest demanded. ”You and I have never come up against one another before. I didn't like the life you led in New York ten years ago, or your friends, but you've suffered nothing through me.”
”If I let you go,” once more came the man's voice, ”I know very well in what chair I shall be sitting before a month has pa.s.sed. I am James Macdougal, Mr. Sanford Quest, and I have got the Ashleigh diamonds, and I have settled an old grudge, if not of my own, of one greater than you.
That's all. A pleasant night to you!”
The door went down with a bang. Faintly, as though, indeed, the footsteps belonged to some other world, Sanford Quest heard the two leave the house.
Then silence.