Detective and mystery stories; Hoodlums -- Fiction; London (England) -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Murder -- Fiction
For how, in the name of Sanity, did the occupant of this room--and
obviously it was occupied at times--enter and leave it?
“Ah!” he muttered, shining the light upon a row of yellow-bound volumes
from which he had commenced his tour of inspection and to which that
tour had now led him back, “it is uncanny--this!”
He glanced back at the rectangular patch of light which marked the trap
whereby he had entered this supernormal room. It was situated close to
one corner of the library, and, acting upon an idea which came to him
(any idea was better than none) he proceeded to throw down the books
occupying the corresponding position at the other end of the shelf.
A second trap was revealed, identical with that through which he had
entered!
It was fastened with a neat brass bolt; and, standing upon one of the
little Persian tables--from which he removed a silver bowl of roses--he
opened this trap and looked into the lighted room beyond. He saw an
apartment almost identical with that which he himself recently had
quitted; but in one particular it differed. It was occupied... AND BY A
WOMAN!
Arrayed in a gossamer nightrobe she lay in the bed, beneath the trap,
her sunken face matching the silken whiteness. Her thin arms drooped
listlessly over the rails of the bunk, and upon her left hand M. Max
perceived a wedding ring. Her hair, flaxen in the electric light, was
spread about in wildest disorder upon the pillow, and a breath of fetid
air assailed his nostrils as he pressed his face close to the gauze
masking the opening in order to peer closely at this victim of the
catacombs.
He watched the silken covering of her bosom, intently, but failed to
detect the slightest movement.
“Morbleu!” he muttered, “is she dead?”
He rent the gauze with a sweep of his left hand, and standing upon the
bottom shelf of the case, craned forward into the room, looking all
about him. A purple shaded lamp burnt above the bed as in the adjoining
apartment which he himself had occupied. There were dainty feminine
trifles littered in the big armchair, and a motor-coat hung upon the
hook of the bathroom door. A small cabin-trunk in one corner of the room
bore the initials: “M. L.”
Max dropped back into the incredible library with a stifled gasp.
“Pardieu!” he said. “It is Mrs. Leroux that I have found!”
A moment he stood looking from trap to trap; then turned and surveyed
again the impassable walls, the rows of works, few of which were
European, some of them bound in vellum, some in pigskin, and one row of
huge volumes, ten in number, on the bottom shelf, in crocodile hide.
“It is weird, this!” he muttered, “nightmare!”--turning the light from
row to row. “How is this lamp lighted that swings here?”
He began to search for the switch, and, even before he found it, had
made up his mind that, once discovered, it would not only enable him
more fully to illuminate the library, but would constitute a valuable
clue.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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