Footsteps in the Dark (24 page)

"Malcolm speaking, from the Priory. Would you please ask Mr. Strange to come to the telephone?"

"Old on, please," said the voice.

Another, and longer pause, followed. Then Spindle spoke again. "Ullo, are you there? Mr. Strange is not in his room, sir. Can I take a message?"

"Are you sure he's not in the lounge?" Charles asked.

"No, sir, I've bin to see. Mr. Strange is out."

"Where's he gone?"

"I couldn't say, sir. "E 'as 'is own key, you see, because 'e told Mr. Wilkes 'e'd got friends in Manfield, and 'e'd be visiting them a good deal, and staying late. Lots of gentlemen prefers to 'ave a key, because I go off duty at one o'clock, sir, you see."

"I see," Charles said. "No, there's no message, thanks. Sorry to have bothered you. Good-bye." He hung up the receiver again, and went out into the hall, where the butler was waiting.

"That's all," Charles said. "Will you explain to the Colonel that I had to telephone very urgently? I'm sure he'll understand. And thanks very much for coming down to let me in."

"Thankyou, sir," the butler said, pocketing the douceur. "The Colonel will be sorry he wasn't in, I know." He accompanied Charles out into the drive again, and watched him get into the car. Charles bade him good night, and set off again for home.

He did not put the car in the garage this time, but left it standing outside the front door. In the library Constable Flinders was trying to avoid Mrs. Bowers' indignant glare, and at the same time to prove himself master of the situation.

Celia looked up anxiously. "No luck?"

"None. I got on to Manfield, and they're sending over at once. Then I rang up the Bell Inn, and asked to speak to Strange." He took off his overcoat, and Celia saw that his good-humoured countenance was looking decidedly grim. "And Strange," he said, "is not there."

Chapter Sixteen

Someone was calling him. Peter could hear his name being spoken, but the voice was very far away. He became aware of a dull ache in his head, and opened his eyes with a groan. The voice sounded nearer; he identified it gradually as his sister's, and as the mist cleared from before his eyes he saw her face above him. Puzzled, he stared up at her. She was stroking his cheek. "Darling, you're better now, aren't you? Peter, speak to me, please speak to me!"

He blinked; his head was splitting, he thought. He said thickly: "Hullo… Margaret! What - what's happened?"

She appeared to be crying. "Oh, thank God!" she said. "I thought you were dead. Oh, my dear, how did he get you?"

He moved his head, staring round him. He was lying on a bare stone floor, in a queer cell-like room which he never remembered to have seen before. His brain felt clogged, but bit by bit his memory was returning. He struggled up on his elbow, grasping Margaret's wrist. "You called me!" he said. "I couldn't find you. Then I…' He broke off, as the whole scene came rushing back to him. "My God, where are we?" he said. "What happened to you?" He put his hand to his head feeling it tenderly. "Lord, my head! Something must have knocked me out. How did I get, here? How did you get here?"

She helped him to his feet. He was still feeling sick and dizzy, and was glad to sink down on to a chair by the plain deal table, and to rest his head in his hands. Margaret knelt beside him. "It was the Monk," she said.

"I heard you call," he said. "Couldn't find you. Then I saw your handkerchief."

"Where?" she asked.

"By the panel. Made me think. Realised there must be a way we hadn't found. Got on to the moulding. An apple. Did you twist it?"

"Yes, yes. By the fireplace. And then?"

"Saw the panel move. So anxious about you, like a fool never stopped to think. Dashed in. Shouted to you. Then…' He stopped, frowning. "Yes, I heard something behind me. I think I turned round. I don't remember anything else. What happened to you? How did you get here? Who brought me here?"

She glanced fearfully over her shoulder at the door of their prison. It was shut, but a steel grille at the height of a man's head was let into it. A sort of shutter with round holes cut in it was drawn across the grille on the outside. She turned back to Peter, and slid her hand into his. "When you'd gone I knelt down and lit the fire, Then I started to get up, and you know how you put out your hand to steady yourself? Well, I did that, and caught on to the apple in the carving. It moved, and I saw the opening in the wall, just as you did. I called you, but you'd gone. I never meant to go in, but there didn't seem to be anything there, and I did just step inside, holding on to the panel all the time. Peter, it was a staircase! Did you realise that?"

"Yes, I remember thinking in a flash how that was what Duval must have meant when he said the Monk went up and down the stairs though we didn't see. Go on: what happened next?"

She shuddered. "It was so awful… my bangle - you know the one - came undone, and fell on to the second step. I didn't stop to think: I never dreamed - anyone was there. I let go the panel and just stepped down one stair to pick it up." Her fingers clung suddenly to his hand. "Peter, I saw the light going, and I turned round, and the panel was closing! Peter! I nearly went mad! I couldn't stop it, and that's when I screamed. I tried to tear it open; it was pitch dark, and I couldn't see any catch, or feel anything. I shrieked for you again and again. Then - then I heard something moving." She was shaking like a leaf. He put his arm round her, clumsily patting her shoulder. "A sort of padding footstep, coming nearer and nearer. And I couldn't see, couldn't move that awful panel. Then - I felt something creep over my mouth. It felt horrible, horrible! Then I knew it was a hand in a glove. It gripped my face so that I could hardly breathe, and an arm grasped me round above the elbows. I couldn't move, I heard you call out to me from the library, and then - then, there was a fiendish sort of chuckle, quite soft, but so utterly wicked, and cruel, that it just finished me, and I fainted. When I came to I was in this place, quite alone. I didn't know how I got here, or who that hand belonged to - or - or how long I'd been here till the door opened, and I saw the Monk standing there. He didn't speak; he looked at me for a moment through those slits in his cowl, then he turned and bent down and started to drag something in. It was you, Peter, and oh, I thought you were dead, I thought you were dead! He just let you fall on the floor, and went out. I hadn't any water or anything to bring you to. I undid your collar, and when you didn't move, I was so desperate I shrieked for someone to come and at least let me have some water. But no one did and no one answered. Only this awful roaring noise went on."

He lifted his head. "Then there is a noise? It's not just in my head?"

"No, it's never stopped all the time I've been here."

He sat for a few minutes trying to collect his thoughts. "Poor kid!" he said. "Ghastly for you. And a fat lot of good I've been to you!"

She laid her cheek against his arm. "You're here, and that's all I care about. You don't know what it was like to be alone. At least we're together now."

"If only my head didn't ache so much I might be able to think," he said. He looked round, and blinked. "Where the hell are we?" he said. "Electric light?"

She glanced up at the bulb that had caught his attention. "So it is. I haven't had time to notice it till now. Then we can't be in the Priory, can we?"

He got up, and began to move round the small room. It was like a square cave cut out of solid stone, all except the door which was made of thick wood. "No window," he said. "We must be underground." He went to the door, and slipping his hand sideways between two of the bars of the grille, tried to push back the shutter by inserting a finger into one of the ventilation holes. He could not move it, nor could he manage to see anything through the holes.

"If we're underground that accounts for the coldness and the smell of damp," Margaret said. "Peter-you don't think - they're going to leave us here - to starve?"

"Of course not," he said instantly. He stood by the door, listening. "That noise," he said. "That's a machine and an electric one, or I've never heard one!" He stared across at his sister, dawning suspicion in his eyes. He seemed about to speak, then checked himself, and went up to one of the walls, and closely inspected the stone blocks that formed it. "I believe we're under the cellars," he said. "I'm no geologist, but this looks to me exactly the same sort of stone as that one that moved and we sealed up. We are in the Priory!"

"Right under the ground?" she asked. "Below the cellars even?"

"I'm not sure, but I think we must be. The place feels like a tomb, much more so than the cellars did." He looked round again. "Why, what fools we've been not to think of it! Didn't those old monks often have underground passages leading from the monastery to the chapel?"

"Yes, I believe they did," she said. "You think that's where we are? But this is a room!"

"Cut, if I'm not much mistaken, in the foundations of the house. I don't know much about monasteries, but I suppose the monks must have had a use for an underground room or so. Storing valuables in times of stress, and all that sort of thing."

"But the light!" she objected. "There's no electricity at the Priory."

"It must be worked by a plant. Good God!"

"What?" she said quickly.

"At the Bell! That big plant I saw there! But it can't possibly…' He broke off, utterly bewildered.

"Did you see a plant there? You never told me."

"I forgot about it. It was one day when Charles and I were there. I got into the engine-room, and I was just thinking what a ridiculously big machine it was for the work it had to do when Spindle hustled me out. Yes, by Jove, and I wondered at the time why he seemed so upset at finding me there. But Wilkes gave a plausible sort of explanation, and I never thought any more about it. Why, good Lord, do you realise that if I'm right, and it's that plant that produces this light, and works the machine we can hear, Wilkes must be in this, up to the eyes?"

"Wilkes?" she repeated incredulously. "That fat, smiling landlord? He couldn't be!"

"I don't know so much. And that throws a fresh light on it. Strange! He's staying at the Bell. For all we know he and Wilkes are hand in glove over this."

"Oh, no!" she said. "It isn't Michael Strange! It can't be! Not after what he said to me! No, no, I won't believe that!"

He did not press the point. He stood still, listening to the throb and the muffled roar of the machine, trying to think what it could be. The noise it made stirred some chord of memory in his brain. Margaret started to speak, and he signed to her to be quiet, with a quick frown and a finger held up.

Suddenly he remembered. Once, a couple of years before, he had been shown over a model printing works. He swung round, and exclaimed beneath his breath: "Margaret! I believe it's a printing press!"

She waited, searching his face. He seemed to be listening more intently than ever. "I don't see…' she began.

"Forgers!" he said. "I can't see what else it can possibly be - if it is a press."

"Forgers?"

"Probably forgers of bank-notes. I don't know." He came back to the table and sat down on the edge of it. "Let's get this straight. I believe we've hit on the secret of the Priory. If there's a gang of forgers at work here that would account for the efforts to get us out of the house. Jove, yes, and what a god-sent place for a press! Empty house, reputation for being haunted, only needed a little ghost-business to scare the countryside stiff, and to scare the former tenants out! I can't think why we never even suspected it."

"But Peter, it's fantastic! How could a gang of forgers know of this underground passage, and that sliding panel?"

"Not the gang, but the man at the head of it. The man who stole the book from the library, and tore the missing pages from the copy at the British Museum. The Monk, in fact."

"You mean Michael Strange, don't you?"

"I don't know whether I mean him or not, but it's clear that the Monk's no ordinary forger. He's someone who knew something about the Priory, someone who's devilish thorough and devilish clever."

She caught his hand, pressing it warningly. The bolts were being drawn back from the door of their cell. Peter thrust her behind him, and turned to face the door.

It opened, and the first thing they saw was the blunt nose of an automatic. A rough voice said: "Keep back, both of you."

They obeyed; there was nothing else to do. The door opened farther, and they saw a man standing there in the rough clothes of a country labourer. A handkerchief was tied round the lower half of his face, and a cloth cap was on his head. He had a bottle of water in his left hand, and this he set down on the floor. "Keep as you are!" he warned them, and took a step backwards, feeling behind him. He pulled a second chair in, and thrust it into the cell. "You can have that, and the water," he said. "And I wouldn't waste my breath shouting for help, if I was you. No one'll hear you, not if you shout till you're black in the face."