Charles Palliser (147 page)

Authors: The Quincunx

I gripped the slab and raised it so that I could slide the two lower bolts back in place, and had just pushed the second of them home so that the recess had moved out of sight, when I heard a noise at the door of the room.

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I felt the hair stiffen on the nape of my neck. The door was being unlocked ! For some reason Jakeman must have awoken and had his suspicions aroused, perhaps because I had unlocked the back-door. How foolish to have done that! I still had the top two bolts to push back but my first thought was to try to hide and to conceal the will in the hope that the bolts would not be noticed. So I left them as they were, blew out my candle, and crept away from that part of the room. As quickly as I could, I concealed the will in the pouch around my neck which I had prepared for it. A moment later, in the dim light that came through the drawn curtains, I saw a shape by the door. At that instant a beam of light shot out at the raising of the shutter of a dark lanthorn the newcomer was carrying.

To my dismay, the beam instantly found the chimney-piece and dwelt there on the incriminating bolts. Then it slowly swung round the room, blinding me for a moment where I was crouching behind a high sopha.

It must be Mr Vamplew! He must have found at last where the nightwatchman hid his keys ! If only I had not put them back! I knew that there was no possibility of escape as long as he stood by the door, and my only hope lay in making some kind of bargain with him.

A voice suddenly said in a carrying undertone: “I know you’re there, Dick or John, or whatever your name really is.”

It was not Mr Vamplew but Mr Assinder!

“What do you want?” I asked and the beam instantly swung onto me.

“You know what I want. The same as you.”

I felt despair and bewilderment. How could he have learned about it?

“I don’t know what you mean,” I said.

“Come, do not prevaricate or I will give the alarm and bring the house about us. I will be well rewarded for my pains. So you will do better to obey me. You see, I know all about you from Vamplew. You and the old woman.”

Mr Vamplew was not acting on his own behalf but was being paid by him! So that was why he was so anxious to find where Jakeman hid the keys!

He directed the beam back onto the chimney-piece : “I see you’ve been clever enough to penetrate that damned trick-lock.”

“No,” I lied. “I haven’t opened it yet.”

“But it’s half-open,” he said, his voice trembling. “So you must know the secret. The old pussy must have told you. Tell it to me. Come over here so that we need only whisper or we’ll be heard.”

Reluctantly I went over and as soon as I came within reach he seized my arm and, while he gripped me tight, searched my pockets and the lining which Mr Vamplew must have warned him about. He found the piece of paste-board — though luckily he did not notice the pouch round my neck.

He looked at his find in bewilderment, then exclaimed: “Why, it’s the same design as the chimney-piece! So I was right. I thought when Vamplew told me he had recognised you that I would keep my counsel and see what came of it. When he told me you were so thick with the old woman I guessed you were plotting something like this.” He held up the paste-board: “Did she give you this?”

“I had it from her, yes.”

He laughed softly: “The damned old b—! She’d rob her own kin, would she.”

All the time I was listening to him I was trying to think of a means to make him move away from the door for this was the only chance I had of escaping. The sole advantages I had were that I already had the will and that unknown to him I had unlocked the back-door. I reckoned that, holding Jakeman’s keys, he

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would assume that I had no way of getting out of the house. And yet, what would it profit me to find myself trapped in the back-yard rather than in the house?

“It’s the solution, isn’t it? How does it work?”

I shook my head.

“Give me half of what we find in there,” he said, “or I’ll go for the reward.”

I had misunderstood him! He knew nothing of the will and all he was interested in was money! In that case I had a chance, and yet I shrank from conniving at simple robbery even against this family. However, it seemed that I had no choice, for if I was to get out of that room I had to distract his attention and the hiding-place was the only thing that would do that.

He drew me over to the chimney-piece, twisting my arm painfully behind my back.

“I had only half-opened it,” I said, “when you came in.”

“So I see,” he said, releasing me a little. “What is the secret?”

“The centre of each of the flowers is a bolt but you withdraw certain of them only,” I explained. “This block of marble is balanced on a pulley in such a way that when you pull out the correct combination it will sink and another will rise behind it containing the safe-place.”

“And which are the ones to pull out?”

“Those which are white on that design in your hand,” I answered.

“Devilish clever. Now do it.”

He smiled at me in a way that aroused my suspicions. Did he then know of the possibility that there was a booby-trap?

I was in a dilemma: I could see no way to avoid opening the hiding-place again, but if I did so then there was nothing to prevent him from harming me once he had what he sought.

“I can’t make out the pattern,” I said, clutching at a desperate hope.

He brought out the paste-board and studied it under the lanthorn.

“The top two are white, sure enough,” he exclaimed. “And the bottom two.” Then squinting at it more closely he said: “But I’m damned if I can tell what the middle one is.

It could be white or dotted like other parts of the design or even black!”

If he thought the central bolt was white and tried to remove it, then he might trigger the trap. And yet if I were to warn him, then I was surely lost. And why should I risk my life to warn him? The man who had fraudulently used the name of his employer to turn away my mother? Who had been embezzling money from that employer? And who had been paid, I assumed, by my enemies to spy on their behalf ?

“White should be safe enough,” he said to himself.

Safe! Then it seemed he did know of the rumour! And yet he had been prepared to force me to brave the lock. He was now engrossed and, seizing my chance, I crept away into the darkness of the room.

“Where are you going?” he said, glancing round as I was almost at the door. “Well, be damned to you if you don’t want your share.”

I knew he believed I had no way to get out of the house, and I suspected that my share would be to be beaten into insensibility — or even worse — and left by the ransacked hiding-place while he secured his escape.

In an instant I was out on the landing, had hastened as silently as I could in the darkness down the stairs and across the hall and was sliding back the bolts of the back-door. Thank heavens, after all, that I had thought to unlock it! Yet MARRIAGE DESIGNS

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I still had no idea of how I would escape from the back-yard as I opened the door and slipped out.

The cold air with its acrid taste of soot and burnt coal rasped in my throat and lungs, and I remembered my first shock at a winter dawn in London. It was bitter now and I had no coat. In a moment I had scrambled over the low and derelict wall between the two back-courts in the hope of finding a way of escaping from the abandoned timber-yard. Once inside, however, I found that the wall surrounding it was about fifteen feet high and topped by tall spikes. Moreover, as I discovered when I ran my hands over it, the brick-work was so smooth that there was nothing to get a hand or a foot-hold on.

There was no escape this way. I crossed over the wall back into the yard of the Mompessons’ house.

At that moment I heard a sound like a roll of thunder. Then the silence became absolute. I looked at the rear of the house and saw that candles were being lit on the upper floors. So the hiding-place had indeed had a booby-trap! I had no time to speculate on Mr Assinder’s fate for as a consequence of his having roused the house I was myself in danger of being discovered. At any moment someone might run out to alert Mr Phumphred and the grooms above the coach-house and stables.

Of course! I suddenly knew precisely what I had to do.

I ran across the yard to the door of the coach-house and hammered on the iron-bound oak. When I glanced back I could see that a number of lights were now ablaze in the house and I heard shouts and the ringing of bells. Everything betokened uproar as manifestly as I could wish.

After an agonizing wait, the door opened and Mr Phumphred stood in his night-shirt holding a candle and sleepily gazing at me as he must have gazed at Miss Quilliam all those years ago.

“There’s an alarm in the house,” I cried. “They sent me to wake you.”

“An alarm?” he said and looked up at its windows above us.

“They want all the men inside at once! I’ll go for the grooms,” I cried and made to push past his large figure.

To my relief he moved aside and I ran up the steps to the loft above the coach-house. I found it was partitioned with one half reserved for the hay, and two mattresses on the floor of the other half. Here I could see the two grooms lying fast asleep.

I shook them awake shouting: “Hurry! You’re called for to go to the house quickly.

It’s burglars!”

They took some time to wake up, grumbling and cursing all the while. I kept up a constant shout of “Thieves! Robbery! Quick!” and pointed out of window towards the lights in the house.

My pantomime of alarm and the evident disorder within doors convinced them. They pulled on their clothes over their night-shirts and stumbled down the steps still in the dark.

When they had gone I wasted not a moment in sliding open the window that looked into the mews. Then I clambered over the sill and lowered myself from it until I dared to drop the last few feet. My luck held for the watch, drawn by the noise, might have been running thither, but at the moment the mews-lane was deserted.

I made my way cautiously towards the street. At last I was free. I had nearly fifty pounds! I had Jeoffrey Huffam’s final will in my possession! And then it came to me suddenly that it was a few hours into my birthday.