The Trail of Fear (6 page)

Helped by Sam, Rezaire accomplished the journey with comparative ease, and in another moment they were in the absolute darkness of the room. As soon as they had entered, they instinctively drew away from the window that they might not show up against the light and waited in perfect silence, though Rezaire was fairly certain the room was empty. Anyone who had been in it, even if asleep, could not have failed to have been wakened by the noise of their entry and their climbing about on the roof.

Not a sound could be heard, not even the regular breathing of a sleeping being. By good luck they had struck an empty room.

At last Rezaire made a slight move in the direction of the door. He had not taken a pace before a girl's voice cried: “Hands up!” and a ray of light from a torch leaped into their eyes, momentarily blinding them. Just within the circle of light there appeared the barrel of a revolver.

CHAPTER VI

NIGHT OPERATIONS

They both stayed absolutely still for the space of a few seconds. The whole thing was so utterly unexpected. To creep into an empty room and find it occupied by a girl with a revolver. Rezaire realized that she must have heard them for some time and that the reason for his thinking the room was unoccupied was that she had been sitting there in the dark waiting for them.

The light and the revolver still pointed steadily at them. Then suddenly Sam laughed.

“Well done, Miss,” he said, “but you've got the wrong people. May we have some light?”

With the utmost coolness he struck a match and, quite unconscious of the revolver which followed his movements, walked to a gas bracket and lighted it.

As the flame lit up the room, Rezaire gave a sigh of relief. Their adversary was only a girl of about nineteen or twenty who was sitting up in bed—torch in one hand and pistol—of an old-fashioned make—in the other.

He noted the steadiness with which she held them, but his practiced glance saw instantly that her wrists were resting on her knees as if to prevent any wavering. Her eyes he could not see properly because of the torch, but he suddenly felt certain that she was afraid.

“Put your hands up,” suddenly said the girl again, as Sam finished lighting the gas, “or I'll fire.”

“Don't fire at us,” replied Sam, still with that easy tolerance. “We're not burglars. In fact, we're after them instead.” Rezaire could see that he was going on the same line as he himself had suggested earlier when they were in Mrs. Gibson's house, that of pretending to be detectives. “Now tell me,” went on Sam, “have you seen or heard anything in this room during the last hour?”

“No, I haven't,” the girl answered, but the revolver still pointed at Sam's chest.

“Do put that gun down, please,” began Rezaire, now taking a hand in the game. He could see that it was imperative that they got through into the house as soon as possible and that this girl was not frightened into giving the alarm. “You're a plucky little girl,” he went on with a smile, “but I wish you had held up the fellows we're after.”

“I don't believe you are detectives.”

“Good Lord!” Rezaire laughed. “Sam, have you got your papers on you?… No? Look here, young lady, I'm sorry, but we haven't any time to waste proving to you that we come from Scotland Yard. We're after a couple of men who, we believe, got in by this window and through the room while you were asleep.”

He moved round toward the door. He and Sam were now standing on opposite sides of the bed in which the girl sat. He could see the white of her knuckles as she gripped the torch and knew now without doubt that she was desperately afraid.

She seemed to be making her mind up. He gave her a few seconds that the reasonableness of his statement might sink in.

Suddenly she spoke again: “Are you really detectives?”

Rezaire nodded.

“And you want to go after the burglars?”

“Yes.”

“Well, the door's locked.”

“Then unlock it, please, and let's get on. The men will have got away by now.”

Still holding the revolver, the girl got lightly out of bed, and took a key from a table at the bedside. Inserting it in the lock she turned it; then with a sudden dramatic movement flung it out of the window.

For a moment Rezaire stared uncomprehending, then took a quick step to the door and tried it. It was locked.

“You young fool,” he began angrily. “What have you done?”

“There!” she said breathlessly with a sort of frightened triumph: “I knew you weren't detectives. I could hear you for a long time just outside my window. If you had really been after someone you'd have come in at once. Besides, when I said the door was locked, neither of you asked how the men you pretended you were chasing had got through. Now you're caught here while I give the alarm.”

But she had in her momentary triumph at outwitting the two men forgotten about Sam who, standing at one side, had been imperceptibly edging behind her. Now he flung himself suddenly across the bed and as the girl opened her mouth to scream, his big hand closed over it.

There was a muffled gurgle and the girl reeled backward under his grip. Almost at the same moment Rezaire had wrested the revolver from her grasp. It was of a very old pattern, more of a trophy than a weapon. He gave a snort of disgust as he snapped it open and found it unloaded.

“Damned young fool!” snarled Sam. “Be quiet, will you!” He shook her in his grasp as a terrier shakes a rat.

“We can't break open the door,” said Rezaire swiftly. “We'll have all the house on us. What are we to do?”

“Don't know,” said Sam shortly. “We must stop this girl giving tongue anyway.” He tore off the pillow slip and stuffed as much of it as he could into her mouth, binding it round her head with a scarf that was lying on a chair. “We'll have to go back through the window and get into another house, I suppose.”

“But,” interjected Rezaire, “surely…that's impossible. Isn't there anything else we can do?”

But Sam did not answer. Having gagged the girl, he now proceeded to tie her up with handkerchiefs, and other articles of clothing he took from the drawers, till she lay, helpless, on the bed.

“Otherwise she'll start to scream,” he explained, “or make a noise of some sort the moment we're gone. Now, come along.”

As in a dream Rezaire obeyed. He had not yet gotten over his fall down the roof and the thought of having to venture out there again brought back the same sick feeling of hopeless terror that he had experienced then. “I don't think—” he began, and realized the hopelessness of his position.

Sam had turned the gas out and was already half out of the window. Rezaire followed him.

“You'll have to help me, Sam,” he whispered.

“Just do as I do. Get out backward and stand in the gutter, leaning forward and supporting yourself as well on the slates with your hands. Then work along crab fashion.”

Fearfully Rezaire obeyed him. The slight fog had drifted away and he could see right up the roof ahead of him to the ridge whence he had clung and then fallen. He stayed there motionless for a moment, feeling quite giddy with the fear that he might fall again, when there would be nothing to save him. He dared not look down between his legs. His heels projected over space. At his side Sam began to shuffle slowly along. He could hear the soft padding of his hands on the tiles and the scrape of his feet on the gutter which, old and rusted, bent perilously under the movement. But though the gutter, the only thing between them and the garden forty feet below, twisted and creaked, it did not break. The minutes seemed like hours, but at last they found themselves crouched at the side of the next attic window which was shut.

“We'll have to go on,” whispered Sam. “I don't think we can get in.”

“No, no, I can't,” returned Rezaire, who had by now quite lost his nerve.

As if in support of his appeal they heard voices somewhere in between the two roofs and saw a head appear for a moment to the left silhouetted against the sky. They kept very still, and the head disappeared. But it was evident the police were still on the roof and were now doing what they might have done a short while before with more success—climbing up at intervals to look down the far slope of the roofs. And at that moment Rezaire's fingers on the window-panes stuck into something soft and clinging. It was a mass of cobwebs.

He at once whispered excitedly to Sam: “Sam, I believe this house is empty. I know there is an empty one in the street. We can force the window. There'll be no one inside. Quick!”

The moment Sam had grasped the significance of the statement, he took out his long thin knife and in a moment he carefully pressed back the hasp. The window creaked open. But even as they crawled in, Rezaire heard the scraping of feet on the roof and saw the head again peering over the crest of the roof, this time much nearer. He fell hurriedly into the room in a heap, not knowing whether he had been seen or not.

Inside was pitch blackness and the stale musty smell of a room that has not been lived in for a long tune. He could hear Sam moving somewhere to his right, though their feet trod light on the thick carpet of dust. He felt in his pockets for a match, but at that moment there was a little scrape and a glow appeared in Sam's shielding hands. It showed them a bare unfurnished attic, similar to the one they had left, with a door at the far side. Then the match went out, followed by Sam's whisper: “Can't see much, even with a light.”

“Best move in the dark,” suggested Rezaire. “We'll give the game away if we show lights in an empty house.”

“Do you think they're after us?”

“Don't know.” He told Sam about the head he had seen. “They may have seen us from the roof and passed the word down below.”

They made their way over to the door and softly turning the handle, opened it. The thick dead silence of a house that has been empty for months met them. It seemed eerie, almost uncanny. There was no tick of a clock or creak of furniture, nothing but the dead silence. After a moment Rezaire stepped out onto the landing and with Sam close behind him began to search for the banisters of the staircase.

They reached the second floor without mishap. Then Sam muttered: “I wish we'd gotten a torch.”

“Doesn't matter,” answered Rezaire. “We can find our way down all right. Much better not to show a light.”

“No, I was thinking that the bobbies have torches and if they get in here after us…”

Rezaire stopped suddenly. “What makes you think they could get in here? Have you heard anything?”

“Nothing,” replied Sam, rather nervously, it seemed for him; “but I just thought they might have an idea. I don't feel comfortable about it.”

“Oh, come on,” returned Rezaire, and, feeling his way, set off down once more. But Sam's nervousness seemed to have communicated itself to him. He was not afraid, and yet there was something fear-inspiring about the dead empty house—without light or sound. Supposing Sam was right and the police were after them even here? They were at a great disadvantage without torches. He wondered again whether they had not been seen getting in and whether the police were not even now waiting for them downstairs.

They finished the last flight of stairs to the ground floor. The hall was not so dark as the rest of the house, being vaguely lit from outside by a fan light through which the rays of a street lamp fell in a patch high up on the wall, but this only seemed to intensify the darkness of the rest. Suddenly Rezaire clutched Sam's arm. He could have sworn he heard a sound. Both stayed immovable for several seconds, hearing nothing save the hum of the darkness in their ears. Then it came again—a distinct noise, which might have been anything from a child's voice outside to the opening of a window at the back. Next he heard a rustle and a chink at his side and realized that the noise had reached Sam too, for Sam had drawn his knife or revolver. Rezaire felt a quick resentment against Sam. Using a weapon would probably not help them very much to get away and would only result in the detectives using their revolvers, and a longer term of imprisonment—or worse, if they were caught.

Very cautiously, with every sense alert, he moved from the foot of the staircase to the wall. The darkness pressed in on him; almost it seemed that it had to be pushed aside.

At last he got his hand against the wall and stayed there facing in the direction from which the sound had come—somewhere at the back of the hall. For a brief instant he heard it again. This tune it was a faint low noise—something like the purring of a cat, a noise he could not place by any means. The darkness hemmed him in all round. He did not know where Sam was, but was certain that he too was on the alert.

It seemed an hour that he waited. The silence that had been so dead before now seemed to be alive, creepingly, malignantly alive. He had the feeling that he was surrounded by people who could see him and whom he could not see. The tension of waiting and watching was beginning to tell upon him, and he began to get jumpy. At any moment he began to expect the flash of a torch in his eyes. At last he decided that his imagination was beginning to run away with him and softly began to move forward once more. He had gone but three paces when his left hand, which was keeping touch with the wall, encountered a door—that of a back room. At the same moment he heard the mysterious sound again—a low rasping purring sound. It seemed all around him; he could not tell where it was. The sweat was beading on his face now and in his desperation he clutched the butt of the revolver which he had put in his pocket as a last resource.

Suddenly, definitely, something touched him on the leg, and was gone again. His heart gave a wild leap and then paused for several seconds, while the blood ran slowly back. His forehead was wet, his lips were dry with fear. With an effort he collected himself and flung out his arm, snatching wildly all round him. He hit a doorpost, but nothing else. At the same instant the thing touched him again on the leg, accompanied by the same noise… He made a quick grasp at his ankles and it dawned on him what it was…

It was only a cat. In his overwhelming relief, unthinking, he gave a little half laugh out loud. It hardly seemed like his own voice, and the sound echoed eerily in the emptiness, followed by a low frightened exclamation from Sam somewhere behind.

He bent down and stroked the animal, purring and rubbing itself against him. He smiled to himself as he thought what a fright it had given him.

Then he stiffened again into immobility as a new thought struck him. The house was empty and untenanted; what was a cat doing there? It was well fed and not frightened or hungry. It must have got in somehow and surely recently, since empty houses are not left open. Of course, it might have got in by the attic window after he and Sam had done so—or it might, he considered slowly, have got in at some other window—after others had got in. The police might even now be in the lower part of the house—waiting. The cat which had frightened him so much at first now appeared to him to be a warning. He stole forward a few paces till he came to what, as far as he could feel, seemed to be the top of the kitchen stairs where he paused to listen again. Vague indeterminate sounds came up to him that might have been real noises or might have been imagination. The cat purred round his feet at intervals, just when he was trying to listen.