Suddenly the Inspector stopped, grasping my arm. The light he held fell upon two footprints close together. They were at right angles to the passages. Apparently the man had passed into the solid wall?
“Hartley, what does it mean?”
“Have you never heard of a ‘priest’s hole’?” he whispered. “In the days when Meudon Hall was built no country house was without its hiding-place. Protestants and priests, Royalists and Republicans — they all used the secret burrow at one time or another.”
“How did he get in?”
“That is what we are here to discover; and as I have no wish to destroy Mr. Ford’s old oak panels I think our simplest plan will be to wait until he comes back again.”
The shadows leaped upon us as Hartley extinguished the light he carried. The great window alone was luminous with the faint starlight that showed the tracery of its ancient stonework; for the rest, the darkness hedged us about in impenetrable barriers. Side by side we stood by the wall in which we knew the secret entrance must exist.
It may have been ten minutes or more, when from the distance — somewhere below our feet, or so it seemed to me — there came the faint echo of a closing door. It was only in such cold silence that we could have heard it. The time ticked on. Suddenly upon the black of the floor there sprang a thin reflection like the slash of a sword — a reflection that grew and broadened into a gush of light as the sliding panel in the wall, six feet from where we stood, rose to the full opening. There followed another pause, during which I could see Hartley draw himself together as if for some unusual exertion.
A shadow darkened the reflection on the floor and a head came peering out. The light but half displayed his face, but I could see that his teeth were bare and glistening like those of a man in some deadly expectation. The next moment he stepped across the threshold.
With a spring like the rush of a terrier Hartley was upon him, driving him off his balance with the impact of the blow. Before I could reach them, the little detective had him beat, though he still kicked viciously until I lent a hand. The click of the handcuffs on his wrists ended the matter.
It was Ford’s valet, the man Jackson.
We were not long by ourselves. I heard a key turned in the lock and Ransome burst out of his room into the corridor, like an angry bull. Almost at the same moment there sounded a quick patter of naked feet from behind us and Harbord came running up swinging a heavy stick in his hand.
They both stopped at the edge of the patch of light in which we were, staring from us to the gaping hole in the wall.
“What the deuce are you about?” cried Ransome.
“Finding an answer to your problem,” said the detective, getting to his feet.
Hartley stepped through the opening in the wall and lifted the candle which the valet had placed on the floor while he was raising the panel from within. By its light I could see the first steps of a flight that led down into darkness.
“We will take Jackson with us,” Hartley said. “Keep an eye on him, Mr. Phillips, if you please.”
It was a strange procession that we made. First Hartley with the candle, then Ransome with Jackson following, while Harbord and I brought up the rear. We descended some thirty steps, formed in the thickness of the wall, opened a heavy door and so found ourselves in a narrow chamber some twelve feet long by seven broad. Upon a mattress at the farther end lay a man, gagged and bound.
As the light fell upon his features, Ransome sprang forward, shouting his name. “Silas Ford, by thunder!”
With eager fingers we loosened the gag and cut the ropes that bound his wrists. He sat up, turning his long thin face from one to the other of us as he stretched the cramp from his limbs.
“Thank you, gentlemen,” said he. “Well, Ransome, how are things?”
“Bad, sir, but it’s not too late.” He nodded his head, passing his hands through his hair with a quick, nervous movement.
“You’ve caught my clever friend, I see. Kindly go through his pockets, will you? He has something I must ask him to return to me.”
We found it in Jackson’s pocket-book, a check antedated a week, for five thousand pounds, with a covering letter to the manager of the bank. Ford took the bit of stamped paper, twisting it to and fro in his supple fingers.
“It was smart of you, Jackson,” he said, addressing the bowed figure before him; “I give you credit for the idea. To kidnap a man just as he was bringing off a big thing — well, you would have earned the money.”
“But how did you get down here?” asked Ransome in bewilderment.
“He told me that he had discovered an old hiding-place — a ‘priest’s hole’ he called it, and I walked into the trap, like the best man may do sometimes. As we got to the bottom of that stairway he slipped a noose over my head and had me fixed in thirty seconds. He fed me himself twice a day, standing by to see I didn’t shout. When I paid up he was to have twenty-four hours’ start. Then he would let you know where I was. I held out a while, but I gave in to-night. The delay was getting too dangerous. Have you a cigarette, Harbord? Thank you. And who may you be?”
It was to the detective he spoke.
“My name is Hartley, Inspector Hartley from Scotland Yard.”
“And I owe my rescue to you?”
The little man from Scotland Yard bowed.
“You will have no reason to regret it.”
It was as we traveled up to town next day that Hartley told me his story. I will set it down as briefly as may be.
“Men do not vanish, Mr. Phillips,” he said, “even though they are billionaires — who can do most things. After I left you in the afternoon of our arrival, I examined the road that skirted the park wall. The traffic of the day added to a flock of sheep had cut and trodden the snow out of all practical uses. I managed to climb the trunk of the oak which, as you will remember, grew outside the wall, and so made my way along a great branch to the spot beneath which the footsteps disappeared.
“I could see that some one had been in the tree before me. The manner of Ford’s escape seemed plain.
“I dropped from the branch and again examined the footprints. The last two were remarkable. They were far more clearly defined than the rest. What accounted for this sudden increase in Ford’s weight? If he had dropped as I had done instead of starting to climb— That was how the truth occurred to me.
“But was it Ford at all? It would be easy enough for a man desiring to leave evidence of the financier’s escape behind him to have stolen a pair of Ford’s boots. I remembered the sudden telephone message and Harbord’s search for his chief. What if the man laying the false trail had seen the lights spring up in the house and had failed to complete his work, rushing back that his absence might not be noted? But the footsteps led away from the house. Might not the boots have been reversed?
“From what I have since discovered my reasoning was correct. Jackson intended to lay a trail across the snow to the park wall that it might be thought that his master had for his own purposes run away. But how could he return without laying a double track? To avoid this he tied on the boots in reverse fashion, intending to climb the wall from the road and return across the lawns to the house. To do this he swarmed up the oak as I had done and struggled along the branch. As he did so he saw the lights spring up in his master’s room. Without further thought of the strange evidence he had left behind him, he dropped to the ground and rushed back as fast as he could.