Part 23 (2/2)

HUSBAND AND WIFE

Hugo bolted the front-door on the inside, relighted the candle which Hawke's man had used as a weapon, and placed it in the middle of the hall floor. He then penetrated into the servants' part of the flat, and emerged on to the balcony by the small side-door, which was open, and had evidently been forced by Hawke's man. And there, on the balcony, he leaned over the bal.u.s.trade in the cold humid night, and tried to recover his calmness. He felt that any systematic, scientific search of the premises would be impossible to him until his mind resembled somewhat less a sea across which a hurricane has just pa.s.sed.

Many questions stood ready to puzzle his brain, but he ignored them all, and fell into a vague reverie, of which Camilla was the centre. And from this reverie he was suddenly startled by the clear, unmistakable sound of a door being shut within the flat. It was not the shutting of a door by the wind, but the careful, precise shutting of a door by some person who had a habit of shutting doors as doors ought to be shut.

'Polycarp has returned!' was his first thought. But he remembered. 'No!

I bolted the front-door on the inside.'

The conundrum of the clock and of the two sizes of footprints in the drawing-room recurred to him. Without allowing himself to hesitate, he strode back again into the flat, with a sort of unbreathed sigh, an unuttered complaint against circ.u.mstances for not giving him an instant's peace.

The candle was still placidly burning in the hall, but its position had certainly been s.h.i.+fted by at least three feet. It was much nearer the portiere leading to the inner hall. Hugo listened intently. Not a sound!

And he stared interrogatively at the candle as though the candle were a guilty thing.

However, he now possessed the revolver of Hawke's man, and this gave him confidence. He left the perambulating candle to itself, and proceeded to the inner hall by the light of his own electric lamp. The door of the princ.i.p.al bedroom, which he had originally meant to invade, lay to his right; the entrance to the drawing-room lay to his left. He thought he would take another look at the drawing-room, and then he thought:

'No; I'll tackle the bedroom.'

And he seized the handle of the bedroom door. At the first trial it would not turn, but in a moment it turned a little, and then turned back against his pressure.

'Someone's got hold of it inside!' he said to himself.

He put the lamp on a chair, and took the revolver from his pocket in readiness for any complications that might follow his forcing of the door.

Then he heard a woman's voice within the bedroom.

'I shall open it, Alb, if you kill me for it. I don't care who it is.

You may be dying of loss of blood. In fact, I'm sure you are.'

And the door was pulled wide open with a single sweeping movement, and Hugo beheld the figure, slightly dishevelled and more than slightly perturbed, of Mrs. Albert Shawn.

'Oh, Alb!' cried Lily. 'It's Mr. Hugo! Oh, Mr. Hugo! whatever next will happen in this world?'

The swift loosing of the tension of Hugo's nerves was too much for his self-possession. He burst into a peal of loud laughter. It was unnaturally loud, it was hysterical; but it was genuine laughter, and it did him good.

Lily straightened herself. So far, she had not admitted Hugo into the chamber.

'It's all very well for you to laugh like that, Mr. Hugo,' she protested sharply; 'but perhaps you don't know that you've nearly killed my husband with that there revolver. The shot came through the door, and took him in the arm just as he was emptying this safe.'

Hugo saw Albert Shawn lying on the stripped bed, a handkerchief tied round his arm, and in the corner near the door a large safe opened, and its contents in a heap on the floor.

'It's all right, sir,' said Albert; 'come in. I'm nowhere near croaking.

I didn't know you were on this lay as well as me, sir. I thought I was going to come down on you to-morrow with a surprise like a thousand of bricks.'

'What lay, Albert?' asked Hugo, advancing into the room.

'The secret-finding lay, sir,' said Albert.

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