The Black House in Harley Street/Chapter 13

Miss Lamotte woke as one wakes from a heavy, dreamful sleep. There were memories of the dream still very vivid in her mind as she sat up and rubbed her eyes. It seemed to her that she had had at least a dozen dreams—no, a hundred. All these dreams had been about something that resolved itself into a crash. A tremendous steam-hammer had suddenly descended upon her and had squashed her out—flat. A giant had started up in her path, and with one swing of an enormous club had sent her whirling and twirling through hundreds of miles of space until she had collided in the most violent fashion with a great rock-bound mountain which sprang out of the sea to meet her. Some monster had picked her up and thrown her into the clouds, into the midst of a thunderstorm such as the world had never seen before—the thunder had deafened her, buffeted her, tossed her here, there, everywhere; the lightning had blinded her, burned her, before she dropped down, down, down into depths of awful blackness.

She opened her eyes as consciousness came back to her, and found herself in a huddled heap at the foot of the stairs with what seemed to be all sorts of wreck​age lying all over her. Everything was in darkness; her mouth, nostrils, ears, eyes were full of dust, and there was a pungent, acrid odour in the place which was almost suffocating. Every bone in her body seemed to ache; her head was splitting with pain. Through the pain there gradually struggled the recollection that as soon as she pulled down the switch the whole world seemed to go to pieces about her, and that something smote her a violent blow on the head at the very instant that she was bodily dashed away.

Always a person of resource, Miss Lamotte felt in her pocket for the box of matches which she never forgot to carry there. She struck one and looked about her. The dust had settled down by then, and the smoke which had filled the place during her period of unconsciousness was curling in wreaths up the staircase. Everything in the place was smashed—the desk, the chair, the green baize door lay in splinters about her. The mysterious door which she believed to give access to some mysterious passage had been blown open—true enough, there was a passage behind it, and it was down that passage that the smoke with its pungent odour came. It was a horrible odour that—it caught her in the throat.

She knew now what had happened. The pulling down of the brass switch had fired some infernal machine, some powerful explosive, and at that moment there was no doubt some house lying in ruins, and very likely dead and dying people amongst the wreckage, while van Mildart, fiendish author of all the mischief, ​had escaped her by fifteen minutes. She could have cursed him when she realised that he had not only tricked her, but had made her his cat's-paw.

She struggled to her feet and lit another match. A breath of air stole through the smoke and revived her, and gave her a sudden thought that was almost too good to encourage. She tottered up the stairs—thank God, the door had been forced open by the explosion! She got through it—collapsed in one of the chairs in the hall——fought her faintness down—and at last got into the street, and, supporting herself by the wall, made her way into Palace Gate.

All the neighbourhood seemed to be there—thronging, crowding, shouting, fighting to get near the wrecked house. The larger portion of the rapidly increasing crowd had evidently spared little time in making any toilet; most of the men and boys had snatched up whatever garments lay nearest to hand, and had run for the scene of the catastrophe, probably half-asleep and dazed, and only recognising in a vague fashion that something had happened. Even now hundreds of them were pushing aimlessly about, staring round them with wondering, uncomprehending eyes. Miss Lamotte, forcing her way into Palace Gate, caught fragments of the disquieted, amazed ejaculations of these people.

"It's an earthquake—I distinctly felt my house shiver."

"Shiver! I was thrown out of bed!"

Another man laughed—laughed like a man who ​knows that in another moment he may possibly be shrieking with pain.

"Earthquake! A cataclysm, you mean. There'll be another in a minute, you'll see."

"Nonsense! You're frightened," said a contemptuous voice. "It's a bomb that's been exploded in the house there—where the smoke and dust's pouring out. I know. I once heard an explosion like this in Spain—Barcelona. This was louder, though."

Then, speaking very thoughtfully, the last speaker added—

"If there was anything alive in that house when that bomb exploded they'll be dead enough now. The house will be gutted."

"Nihilists, I expect," suggested some one.

"Not very likely in this country," said some one else.

That section of the crowd in which Miss Lamotte had become wedged had now forced its way to the front of the wrecked house, and a simultaneous murmur went up from its members as they gazed out at the scene before them. The front door had been blown into the road, and the cavernous-like hall beyond it was hazy with grey smoke and yellow dust. Every window had been shattered, and the woodwork hung from the casements in broken spars and splinters, while the glass lay all over the street. In the adjacent houses and in those facing them, scarcely a window-pane was left unbroken; behind every window and leaning over the window-sills were frightened women and children roused out of ​their morning sleep by the thunder-like roar of the explosion. How powerful in its effects that explosion had been was shown by the presence in the walls of the house of two great cracks which ran from basement to roof in zigzag lines. There was a drifting wreath of smoke and dust above the chimneys, some of which had fallen, while others were shattered and forced out of place. High above this the summer morning sky was blue and placid.

There was already a numerous body of policemen on the scene; and others were coming up hurriedly, seeming to spring, as London police do on these occasions, from nowhere. They managed to push the people back, forming a semicircle in front of the damaged house. Miss Lamotte was pushed back with the rest, but she contrived to edge round until she came to an inspector, to whom she whispered a few words and showed a certain card, with the result that she soon found herself on the steps of the house. And at that moment some voice in the crowd without screamed one word that spread up and down the street with the swiftness of electricity—

"Fire!"

Glancing instinctively upward, Miss Lamotte and the inspector saw a tongue of scarlet flame, wicked and cruel in the clear sunlight, shoot out of an upper window as if it wished to cool its rage with a draught of the morning air. A puff of smoke followed.

"That's what I expected," said the inspector coolly. "However, the fire brigade and the salvage men'll ​be here directly. Ah! here's Macnaughten and some men whom you'll know."

Miss Lamotte turned to see a motor-car dash up to the foot of the steps. Out of it leapt Macnaughten and Christopher Aspinall, who were followed by other men, one of whom she recognised as Macnaughten's principal assistant; the other was a well-known Scotland Yard official. All four ran up the steps, open-mouthed with amazement at what they saw. And Christopher Aspinall's eyes fell upon Miss Lamotte. He sprang forward with a sharp cry and seized her arm.

"Here!" he exclaimed. "This is one of van Mildart's lot. Collar her, some of you. And what's happened? The house seems to have been wrecked. What is it? It was right enough when I left it half an hour ago."

"Let Miss Lamotte go, Mr. Aspinall. It's all right—she's one of us," said Macnaughten, and he stopped and whispered a word in Christopher's astonished ear.

"What is it, Miss Lamotte?" he went on. "What's happened?"

"He's blown the house to pieces," she answered. "And now it's on fire."

"Fire!" screamed Christopher. "But there's Dick and Maisie and Moira in there, I tell you! Locked up. I escaped—bribed one of the keepers, and got off to Scotland Yard for assistance. They'll be burnt to death. Here, I know where they are. This way!"

He began to fight his way along the marble-walled ​hall, followed by the others. A stalwart policeman, already black and grimy, stopped them, shaking his head.

"It's no use, Inspector," he said. "There's nothing but a mass of rubbish at the end of the hall. The inside of the house seems to have collapsed altogether. If only this smoke would clear, we could see better. But there's no way along there."

Christopher almost danced with rage. He was about to dash out of the house when Miss Lamotte seized him by his arm and at the same time tapped Macnaughten on the elbow.

"There's a way in by the back," she said hurriedly. "Come round there with me—we may be able to get to them that way."

"Which side of the house are they locked up in, Mr. Aspinall?" asked Macnaughten. "Can you tell?"

"To the best of my belief, well at the back," said Christopher. "Come on, Miss Lamotte—show us where this way is."

The first of the fire-engines was just dashing up to the door as they went down the steps, and Macnaughten promptly secured the services of one of the men and bade him follow him. With the aid of the police, they forced a way through the crowd and got round to the narrow street. At the door of the little house from whence she had unwittingly fired the infernal machine Miss Lamotte paused and addressed the policemen who accompanied them.

​"Keep everybody away from here," she said. Then, leading the way into the house and down the stairs to the secret chamber, she pointed out the passage, and continued: "I'm certain that this passage leads into the wrecked house, but whether you can get along it or not I don't know."

"I shall try," said Christopher resolutely. "My God! why, they'll be roasted alive up there unless that chap's released them, and he was well enough bribed. If I don't come back———"

"I'll go with you, sir," said the fireman. "You'll want help. Here, wait a moment."

He ran upstairs and presently returned with two policemen's lanterns, which he carefully lighted. Then he took out his axe.

"Now, sir," he said, giving Christopher one of the lanterns. "Let me go first; do you follow. I'm more used to this sort of thing than you are."

When he and Christopher had passed into the narrow tunnel Macnaughten looked at Miss Lamotte, having already looked carefully around the place in which he found himself.

"This is a queer place!" he said. "How did you find it out?"

"He got me into it," answered Miss Lamotte—"van Mildart. I believe now that he meant it to be my grave."

Macnaughten whistled.

"Too clever for you in the end then, after all!" he said.

​Miss Lamotte laughed. Her laughter sounded somewhat queer—forced. Macnaughten looked at her, and saw that she had had a shock.

"I'm not sure that he hasn't been too clever for himself," she said, with a slight catch in her voice. "I think he miscalculated something, but I'm sure he's dead—killed in the explosion."

"Yes, that explosion. We heard it in Piccadilly as we came racing along. Who caused it? He?"

Miss Lamotte pointed to the remains of the glass disc and the brass switch. "I did it," she answered—"unconsciously, of course."

She rapidly told him of the events of the evening. Macnaughten listened carefully and nodded his head at certain points.

"He's been interrupted in whatever it was he was after," she said. "Probably by the man whom Aspinall succeeded in bribing. And———"

At that moment Christopher's voice came booming through the tunnel—

"There are stairs here, and the fireman says they are all safe, right up to the top, where there is a door. Are you coming?"

"Let us go," said Miss Lamotte, and passed into the narrow opening, followed by Macnaughten. "We may be of use."

They had to make their way forward in a crouching position for what seemed a considerable distance but was really some twenty yards. At the end of the tunnel, in an enlarged space, they found Christopher ​throwing the light of his lantern on the lower steps of a stone staircase. Above them they heard the fireman dealing repeated blows upon a door with his axe. When they were half-way up the stairs the door went in with a crash. A pungent, acrid odour swirled down to them accompanied with wreaths of smoke, but they struggled on, and presently stood in a room through a broken window of which came a welcome gust of air.

"Now for it!" said Christopher, making for a gap in the wall on the other side of this room, which was in a state of wreckage. "They're on this part of the house, I'm sure, though I can scarcely tell where—they've so many passages and corridors here. Ah! here's a sight!"

They had passed into the room in which van Mildart and his two colleagues had sat in judgment on Goulburn the previous evening, and where he had found his flight suddenly arrested by the traitor's revolver. This room, now a mass of wreckage, was horrible to look upon. Its furniture, pictures, ornaments had been blown into infinitesimal fragments. There was a hole in the ceiling big enough to allow for the passage of a balloon; another in the floor, which revealed further wreckage in the apartment below. A flapping window-blind had been riddled as with scores of bullets; curtains, blown out like sails through the devastated casements or the gaps in the walls, were streaming to the wind outside. Scarcely a yard of the flooring remained intact; they had to pick their way over the beams and girders.

​"The fire isn't on this side of the house," Macnaughten was saying. "Quick, Mr. Aspinall—we may get them out before it spreads this way. Where are they?"

That was not so easy a question to answer. The house, very large in itself, seemed to be a veritable warren of small rooms in that particular part of it. Some of the doors of these rooms had been blown open by the explosion; others remained fast, immovable; the fireman's axe failed to break them in.

"And I can't tell if they're in there or not!" groaned Christopher. "It was out of one of these places that I was released, but the fellow took me round such corners and down such stairs that———"

"Here's somebody!" exclaimed the fireman, who, being ahead, was the first to turn into another corridor. "Injured, too!"

"It's Dick!" exclaimed Christopher, dashing forward to where Goulburn lay, half-propped up against the wall, half-recumbent on the floor of the corridor.

"Surely he isn't dead!"

"No!" said Macnaughten, who had immediately dropped on his knees at Goulburn's side. "He's had a knock. Here, hold him up, and I'll give him some brandy—he'll come round."

But when Goulburn came round he was still dazed, and it was some minutes before they could get any coherent words out of him. They made out at last that when the explosion occurred he was hurled violently against the wall, and lost consciousness. On coming ​to, he found that the doors of the room in which he was locked had been forced open, and he had immediately set out to find Maisie and Moira, only to grow faint in the corridor and to become unconscious again. He was not sure that he had not got up again, wandered about, and again become unconscious. And he had not the least idea as to where the girls were.

On hearing this, Christopher became half-wild with anxiety and impatience. He ran from door to door, shouting the names of the two girls at the top of his voice, while the fireman, more systematic and accustomed, made a thorough, if more leisurely, search. Most of the rooms were open; all were empty.

Christopher, darting this way and that, lost himself. He ran up side staircases and down back staircases. Twice he opened doors leading to the front of the house, and was immediately aware that fire was raging there. He made haste to shut them ere the flames licked through. Finally, he made his way to the garret, and so to the roof. And there, crouched against a stack of chimneys, wide-eyed with fright, and obviously incapable of doing anything for themselves, he found Maisie and Moira, who at sight of him burst into incoherent sobs of thankfulness, and hastened to clasp his arms, hands, and neck.

That Christopher was something more than thankful to see his sweetheart and his friend's sweetheart safe from anything but fright goes without saying, but the uppermost thought in his mind at that moment was that here was a nice little job for one small man to ​carry out. Maisie was laughing and crying in a breath, and held him so tightly that he was afraid he would never disentangle himself from her grip. Moira, after the first outburst, was quiet, but her face was very white and her eyes full of fear. Christopher pulled himself together.

"Now, girls," he said, "we've got to get out of this. Moira, pull yourself together. Dick's safe downstairs. Now, Maisie, leave loose, and follow me. Come after her, Moira."

But Maisie shrank from what might be downstairs. The two girls, flying anywhere in their panic of fear after the explosion, knew that the house was on fire, and had gone higher and higher under the impression that there was no escape beneath them. And Maisie screamed at the notion of facing the burning mass beneath, being unaware that so far the fire was confined to the front part of the house.

"No, no, Chris!" she cried, holding back as he tried to draw her to the stairs. "I daren't!"

"Well, you've just got to!" said Christopher, with determination. "If you won't, I'll make you."

"Do what Christopher wishes, Maisie," urged Moira. "Go along, Christopher. I'll come quietly."

He got them down the stairs to the garrets; then to the next floor. And then, opening a door, he realised that there was no escape that way. Whether it was that some one had opened doors in the lower storeys, or that the fire had eaten its way through, there was a ​perfect hurricane of lurid flame coming up the stairs, and the air was already reeking hot.

Christopher said "God help us!" under his breath, and dragged the girls back into the room they had just quitted. He made for the windows, the glass of which had been blown out, and climbing through one of them, found himself on a parapet at a great height from the street, in which by that time a vast crowd had assembled. His heart sank within him as he looked down—he and his charges seemed to be so far away from help. But as he stood up on the parapet they saw him from below and began to make preparations for his rescue.

There was another and a broader parapet on the floor beneath, and the escape, when it was at last run up, only reached to this. A fireman lifted an anxious face to Christopher.

"Can't you get down to this floor, sir?" he said. "The fire's not up to it yet."

"It's on the stairs," said Christopher. "Wait!"

He climbed through the window again, and running to the door, looked down the well of the staircase. There was a volume of smoke pouring up and a rising shower of sparks. Could they do it in a wild rush?

Christopher beckoned the two girls to him. He looked at Moira with an appealing recognition of her courage.

"Now, then!" he said. "We've got to get down those stairs—only a dozen of 'em. Run, Moira!"

​Then, without giving her time to protest or to struggle, he snatched Maisie up in his arms and made a dash through the curling smoke and the flying sparks, and burst open the door of the room beneath with a vigorous kick. The smoke and the sparks were licked in after them as he and Moira ran for the window.

From the street beneath a great cheer went up as Christopher, still carrying Maisie, appeared on the parapet. Christopher scarcely heard it; he went through certain things as if he were in a dream until a few moments later he found himself and Goulburn, now restored but still dazed, and Moira and Maisie, all safely bestowed in a neighbouring house with commiserating faces around them. He began to feel very light-headed and to show a desire to laugh.

"I—I didn't think Maisie could have been so heavy!" he said. "I———" Then, in spite of himself, Christopher collapsed, and had to be taken care of.

The house burnt itself out—with all its black secrets. Macnaughten and Miss Lamotte, having got Goulburn safely out of it, watched the work of destruction go on, and tacitly agreed that fire was the best thing to cover over so dark and mysterious a headquarters of crime. Unknown to them, there were those in the watching crowd who could have told wonderful things of what had gone on in the rooms and chambers which the scarlet flames were rapidly eating—especially a venerable-looking person with a snow-white beard, and another, who passed him more than once without showing a sign of recognition, and who might have been ​some well-to-do barrister or professional man. These two were wondering what had really happened, and where their colleague was—so too wondered some other birds of prey going in and out, under the guise of highly respectable citizens, amongst the watching crowd. And they cursed their luck under their breath.

Miss Lamotte broke a long silence.

"Well, he was too much for me in the end," she said. "I didn't get him."

Macnaughten's stern face relaxed into a grim smile.

"All the same," he said drily, "he's caught—at last!"

Miss Lamotte sighed.

"Knowing him as I do," she said, "I can scarcely believe it!"

Later in the morning they all returned to Harley Street. Miss Lamotte and Macnaughten went to van Mildart's house. The housekeeper was at the open door. They saw at a glance that she knew nothing of what had happened.

"Of course, you haven't seen your master this morning?" said Macnaughten.

The woman stared from one to the other in sheer astonishment.

"Dr. van Mildart, sir? Oh yes—it's not ten minutes since the doctor left the house!"