“Oh no, you don’t!” Shaw was on his feet already. He took two strides forward and his hand came down in a hard grip on Canasset’s wrist. “You’ll come round with us yourself — if you don’t mind! And there’s absolutely no need to tell any of your staff what you’re going to do. Right?”
Canasset’s lips tightened murderously. He snapped, “When you’ve finished, I shall report your behaviour to the proper quarter, I assure you. I have friends—”
“I’ll take a chance on getting a black mark, I think.” Shaw let go of the man’s wrist and stood back. “Now — let’s go. I’ve got a gun handy, and it’ll be right behind you all the time even if you can’t see it I suggest you take me straight to Miss Ross—”
“There’s no Miss Ross here, damn you—”
“All right, all right, we’ll see. I may as well warn you, if you try anything I don’t like, I’ll shoot. We know this is big business, Canasset, and I’m not taking any chances now. When we’ve found the girl you’re coming with me, and you’re going to talk.” Shaw grasped the man’s shoulder. “Get going.”
Canasset, his face furious but with no trace of fear in it, moved to the door.
CHAPTER TEN
Canasset led the way down the wooden staircase into the body of the warehouse. Tight-Upped, he asked, “Where d’you want to go?”
“Everywhere. We may as well start with this building as any other.”
“You won’t find anything. You’ll get nothing but trouble for yourself as a result of this.” The man seemed utterly confident as though he scarcely needed even to protest any more. Shaw had one nasty moment of self-doubt and then his hand went inside his jacket and he said in a quiet voice.
“Just lead the way, Mr Canasset.”
Canasset was right, though; it didn’t get them anywhere.
Canasset grew more and more confident as Shaw grew wearier with his unavailing search; but Shaw fancied that the managing director was in fact keeping his eyes on the go as much as he and Pelly, continually looking, as Shaw suspected, for a means of letting some one know what was going on just in case Shaw should stumble on something which he didn’t want known about.
After a time it began to seem pretty hopeless. In the firm’s garage Shaw found a black Jaguar; but it bore the registration number as indicated earlier by Canasset. Shaw was positive there had been a switch of number-plates for the job, but he couldn’t prove it; the records showed the car’s true registration as the one Canasset had given, and Shaw could get nothing out of the garage foreman. Nevertheless, he examined the car minutely just in case there should be any traces of the girl. There was nothing. Further, Shaw could find no evidence of a back entry to the yard, and the sole means of entry and exit appeared to be by way of the Calcutta Street gates, a fact which Canasset confirmed when he was asked. The man looked briefly triumphant, gloating, when he noticed Shaw’s baffled expression.
It was only as they were crossing the yard back to the big warehouse that Shaw caught sight of something which looked as though it could have interesting possibilities. Beyond a boiler-house there was a dark passageway built on to the side of the warehouse itself, and ending, so far as he could make out, in a blank brick wall.
Plainly, though, it must lead to something more than that.
Shaw said, “I’ll just take a look along there.”
“Certainly. It only leads to the cellars.”
“Which you haven’t mentioned before, have you… I think we’ll just go down for a look round.”
Canasset said, “They haven’t been used for years.”
Shaw looked at him sardonically. “You mean they haven’t been used for the storage of goods.”
“Hava it your own way.” Canasset shrugged.
As they came under the lee of the passage roof into the shadows, Shaw brought his Webley right out and jabbed it into Canasset’s back. He felt a prickly sensation run along his spine; he was certain now that he was getting nearer the heart of things, even though Canasset didn’t appear worried. He said harshly, “Careful what you do. Remember what I told you. If this is a trap, I’ll shoot first.”
“It’s no trap. I told you — we’ve nothing to hide. You’re making a big mistake.”
They were at the end of the passage now and there was little light. Shaw groped along, kept his gun in the small of Canasset’s back. Canasset stopped, reached up, and flicked a switch. A dim light came on overhead and showed up a heavy, iron-bound door set in the warehouse wall and a dirty, red-painted sign which read: NO ADMITTANCE WITHOUT AUTHORITY OF WAREHOUSE MANAGER Canasset took a bunch of keys from his pocket and opened up a glass frame beside the door. From this he took the key of the cellar. Shaw asked, “Why the ‘No admittance’?”
“Because it’s not safe down there — stairs are rotten and the floor’s shaky, but we don’t want to waste money on doing up a place we never use. Is there anything else you want to know?”
“Not for the moment,” Shaw murmured.
Canasset put the key in the lock and turned it. Then he lifted an iron bar set in brackets across the entrance, and swung the door itself back on its hinges. Reaching forward, he fiddled with another switch, and a second light came on inside, a feeble yellow light which showed up wooden steps descending into the blackness.
The hairs at the back of Shaw’s neck seemed to rise up as he and Pelly followed Canasset carefully down the steps. The place was damp, forbidding, mildewed perhaps from the river’s seeping nearness; a stuffy, dank smell came up, a smell like the grave.
It was, Shaw thought fancifully, just like that — opening up a grave. He shivered. It had the air of having been used more for some kind of prison than as a store, and indeed part of the smell seemed to come from age-old human sweat and misery, from close-packed humanity like a present-day Black Hole of Calcutta… in Calcutta Street, Canning Town… Shaw checked himself. Imaginings didn’t help at a time like this, he needed his wits about him. But in solid fact these building were old, had seen much history, might have been used for many things in their time. The smell, now he came to think of it, seemed to hold some of the pungency of African sweat… could this, perhaps, be one of the meeting-places of the Cult, then? That was something he would find out from Canasset when they got the man back to the Admiralty.
Dimly in the light’s radiance, though this didn’t extend far into the gloomy places, he saw that the vast cellar was partitioned off by thick walls into cubicles with narrow alleyways running between, rather like a wine-cellar. Once, it had very likely been such a place.
Canasset turned at the bottom of the steps and said, “Well — there you are. You’ve seen the lot now. I told you there wasn’t anything down here.”
His voice seemed to echo round the walls as they stood in that small pool of light from overhead, echo away until it was lost in the total darkness beyond, leaving behind it a silence which seemed to reach out clammily and touch Shaw. The whole place had a wrong feel, an evil feel. It was almost as though there was some physical presence there, eyes watching him from the dark. He shivered suddenly, caught up again in those vivid imaginings, hearing again the horrible throb of those African drums last night, wondering what could have gone on down here too, what ceremonies, perhaps, what gruesome rites had been performed recently in the name of the Edo Cult to leave their aura in the atmosphere.
He gave himself a slight shake, ridding himself of such fancies. He said, “I’d just like to look right through.”