Criminals -- England -- Fiction; Detective and mystery stories
“They killed the woman, of course,” he said, speaking his thoughts
aloud. “I was afraid of this. If I could only have got our men in!”
“You expected him to be murdered?” said Elk in astonishment.
Dick nodded. He was trying the window of the woman’s room. It was
unfastened, and led on to a narrow parapet, protected by a low
balustrade. From there, access could be had into another room on the
same floor, and no attempt had been made by the murderer to conceal the
fact that this was the way he had passed. The window was wide open, and
there were wet footmarks on the floor. It was a guest room, slightly
overcrowded with surplus furniture, which had been put there apparently
by the housekeeper instead of in a lumber-room.
The door opened again into the corridor, and faced a narrow flight of
stairs leading to the servants’ quarters above. Elk went down on his
knees and examined the tread of the carpet carefully.
“Up here, I think,” he said, and ran ahead of his chief.
The third floor consisted entirely of servants’ rooms, and it was some
time before Elk could pick up the footprints which led directly to No.
1. He tried the handle: it was locked. Taking a pace backward, he raised
his foot and kicked open the door. He found himself in a servant’s
bedroom, which was empty. An attic window opened on to the sloping roof
of another parapet, and without a second’s hesitation Dick went out,
following the course of that very precarious alleyway. Farther along,
iron rails protected the walker, and this was evidently one of the ways
of escape in case of fire. He followed the “path” across three roofs
until he came to a short flight of iron stairs, which reached down to
the flat roof of another house, and a guard fire-escape. Guarded it had
been, but now the iron gate which barred progress was open, and Dick ran
down the narrow stairs into a concrete yard surrounded on three sides by
high walls and on the fourth by the back of a house, which was
apparently unoccupied, for the blinds were all drawn.
There was a gate in the third wall, and it was ajar. Passing through, he
was in a mews. A man was washing a motor-car a dozen paces from where he
stood, and they hurried toward him.
“Yes, sir,” said the cleaner, wiping his streaming forehead with the
back of his hand, “I saw a man come out of there about five minutes ago.
He was a servant—a footman or something—I didn’t recognize him, but he
seemed in a hurry.”
“Did he wear a hat?”
The man considered.
“Yes, sir, I think he did,” he said. “He went out that way,” and he
pointed.
The two men hurried along, turned into Berkeley Street, and as they did
so, the car-washer turned to the closed doors of his garage and whistled
softly. The door opened slowly and Mr. Joshua Broad came out.
“Thank you,” he said, and a piece of crisp and crackling paper went into
the washer’s hand.
He was out of sight before Dick and the detective came back from their
vain quest.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account