Garniman finished, and straightened up. And then, still without speaking, he picked Patricia up in his arms and carried her out of the room.
The Saint braced his muscles.
His whole body tightened to the effort like a tempered steel spring, and his arms swelled and corded up until the sleeves were stretched and strained around them. For an instant he was absolutely motionless, except for the tremors of titanic tension that shuddered down his frame like wind-ripples over a quiet pool. . . . And then he relaxed and went limp, loosing his breath in a great gasp. And the Saintly smile crawled a trifle crookedly over his face.
"Which makes things difficult," he whispered—to the four unanswering walls.
For the cords about his wrists still held him firmly.
Free to move as he chose, he could have broken those ropes with his hands; but bound as he was, he could apply scarcely a quarter of his strength. And the ropes were good ones—new, half-inch, three-ply Manila. He had made the test; and he relaxed. To have struggled longer would have wasted valuable strength to no purpose. And he had come out without Belle, the little knife that ordinarily went with him everywhere, in a sheath strapped to his left forearm—the knife that had saved him on countless other occasions such as this.
Clumsily he pulled himself out of the chair, and rolled the few yards to the desk. There was a telephone there; he dragged himself to his knees and lifted the receiver. The exchange took an eternity to answer. He gave Teal's private number, and heard the preliminary buzz in the receiver as he was connected up; and then Wilfred Garniman spoke behind him, from the doorway.
"Ah! You are still active, Templar?"
He crossed the room with quick lumbering strides, and snatched the instrument away. For a second or two he listened with the receiver at his ear; then he hung it up and put the telephone down at the far end of the desk.
"You have not been at all successful this evening," he remarked stolidly.
"But you must admit we keep on trying," said the Saint cheerfully.
Wilfred Garniman took the cigarette from his mouth. His expressionless eyes contemplated the Saint abstractedly.
"I am beginning to believe that your prowess was overrated. You came here hoping to find documents or money—perhaps both. You were unsuccessful."
"Er—temporarily."
"Yet a little ingenuity would have saved you from an unpleasant experience—and shown you quite another function of this piece of furniture."
Garniman pointed to the armchair. He tilted it over on its back, prised up a couple of tacks, and allowed the canvas finishing of the bottom to fall away. Underneath was a dark steel door, secured by three swivel catches.
"I made the whole chair myself—it was a clever piece of work," he said; and then he dismissed the subject almost as if it had never been raised. "I shall now require you to rejoin your friend, Templar. Will you be carried, or would you prefer to walk?"
"How far are we going?" asked the Saint cautiously.
"Only a few yards."
"I'll walk, thanks."
Garniman knelt down and tugged at the ankle ropes. A strand slipped under his manipulations, giving an eighteen-inch hobble.
"Stand up."
Simon obeyed. Garniman gripped his arm and led him out of the room. They went down the hall, and passed through a low door under the stairs. They stumbled down a flight of narrow stone steps. At the bottom, Garniman picked up a candlestick from a niche in the wall and steered the Saint along a short flagged passage.
"You know, Wilf," murmured the Saint conversationally, "this has happened to me twice before in the last six months.
And each time it was gas. Is it going to be gas again this time, or are you breaking away from the rules?"
"It will not be gas," replied Garniman flatly.
He was as heavily passionless as a contented animal. And the Saint chattered on blithely.
"I hate to disappoint you—as the actress said to the bishop— but I really can't oblige you now. You must see it, Wilfred. I've got such a lot more to do before the end of the volume, and it'd wreck the whole show if I went and got bumped off in the first story. Have a heart, dear old Garbage-man!"
The other made no response; and the Saint sighed. In the matter of cross-talk comedy, Wilfred Garniman was a depressingly feeble performer. In the matter of murder, on the other hand, he was probably depressingly efficient; but the Saint couldn't help feeling that he made death a most gloomy business.
And then they came into a small low vault; and the Saint saw Patricia again.
Her eyes were open, and she looked at him steadily, with the faintest of smiles on her lips.
"Hullo, boy.'"
"Hullo, lass."
That was all.
Simon glanced round. In the centre of the floor there was a deep hole, and beside it was a great mound of earth. There was a dumpy white sack in one corner, and a neat conical heap of sand beside it.
Wilfred Garniman explained, in his monotonously apathetic way.
"We tried to sink a well here, but we gave it up. The hole is only about ten feet deep—it was not filled up again. I shall fill it up tonight."
He picked up the girl and took her to the hole in the floor. Dropping on one knee at the edge, he lowered her to the stretch of his arms and let go. . . . He came back to the Saint, dusting his trousers.
"Will you continue to walk?" he inquired.
Simon stepped to the side of the pit, and turned. For a moment he gazed into the other man's eyes—the eyes of a man empty of the bowels of compassion. But the Saint's blue gaze was as cold and still as a polar sea.
"You're an overfed, pot-bellied swamp-hog," he said; and then Garniman pushed him roughly backwards.
Quite unhurriedly, Wilfred Garniman took off his coat, unfastened his cuff-links, and rolled his sleeves up above his elbows. He opened the sack of cement and tipped out its contents into a hole that he trampled in the heap of sand. He picked up a spade, looked about him, and put it down again. Without the least variation of his heavily sedate stride he left the cellar, leaving the candle burning on the floor. In three or four minutes he was back again, carrying a brimming pail of water in either hand; and with the help of these he continued his unaccustomed labour, splashing gouts of water on his materials and stirring them carefully with the spade.
It took him over half an hour to reduce the mixture to a consistency smooth enough to satisfy him, for he was an inexperienced worker and yet he could afford to make no mistake. At the end of that time he was streaming with sweat, and his immaculate white collar and shirt-front were grubbily wilting rags; but those facts did not trouble him. No one will ever know what was in his mind while he did that work: perhaps he did not know himself, for his face was blank and tranquil.
His flabby muscles must have been aching, but he did not stop to rest. He took the spade over to the hole in the floor. The candle sent no light down there, but in the darkness he could see an irregular blur of white—he was not interested to gloat over it. Bending his back again, he began to shovel the earth back into the hole. It took an astonishing time, and he was breathing stertorously long before he had filled the pit up loosely level with the floor. Then he dropped the spade and tramped over the surface, packing it down tight and hard.