Then his face started to blacken, his eyes to bulge, and Betty Dale turned away, almost fainting. She leaned against the wall, head on arm, nauseous and frightened, while Hanscom died.
In the suddenly hushed room, the major asked in a low voice, “Who — is this Sam Slawson?”
No one seemed to know….
Chapter XX
SECRET AGENT “X” slowly inched his body back from the coping. He had heard enough. Though he had not been able to see into that room of death, he had been able to evoke a picture of the scene from the things that had been said.
He stole back to the drain-pipe. Going down it would not be as difficult as going up had been, though, perhaps, more dangerous.
He looked down. Three stories below he could see the dim figures still patrolling the grounds.
He swung himself over, gripped the drain-pipe with hands and feet, and slid downward slowly. He passed the window of the top floor room that he had escaped from; then the second floor, then the ground floor. At the ground floor he stopped, clung precariously, while he glanced down. A trooper was almost immediately beneath him, a little to his right. That was where the garage was built into the house. The trooper had apparently been placed on guard over the hearse, which was evidence.
“X” could not descend to the ground. To do so would have been suicide.
He glanced in at the ground floor window. It opened into the hallway. There was a dim light at the door, and he could see nobody there, at the moment. His muscles were becoming cramped, he was beginning to slip. The descent from the roof had not been easy.
He swung one leg in at the window, and in another moment he stood in the hall. The door of the rear room where Rice and Gates had been killed, was open. A couple of troopers were there, and a man who knelt beside Gates’s body — evidently the medical examiner had arrived.
“X” could hear steps descending the staircase from the upper floor, could hear Denvers, and Judge Farrell, and then Senator Thane’s voice raised in angry protest.
He heard Judge Farrell say: “You were in the room with Hanscom, Thane. You could also have shot Gates — you know you’re a crack shot!”
He didn’t get Thane’s reply, for he was gliding down the hall toward the basement stairs. He had to get to some place where he could plan his next move, where he could shed the disguise of Governor-elect Farrell. It was imperative that he work fast; death was visiting these public men in swift succession. What was the object of the murderer?
If he could only get a chance to read over the papers Betty had given him relating to Sam Slawson, the escaped convict, the man whose name had been on Hanscom’s dying lips.
He opened the door to the basement steps, and just then a trooper came out of the rear room, saw him, and raised a shout.
The trooper drew a gun, and “X” stepped into the darkness of the basement staircase, swung the door to behind him.
He crouched low, ran down the steps. And it was well he did, for there were the repeated, smashing reports of the trooper’s thirty-eight, and the slugs tore through the door over his head.
He reached the bottom and groped his way ahead, feeling along the wall.
Above him the house burst into a bedlam of excitement. He heard faint, hoarse shouts, running feet.
He reached the end of the wall, felt a wooden wall across his path. He turned left along this wooden wall and touched a door. There was a hasp on this door, and a padlock hanging from its open end.
“X” opened the door, and stepped through.
Not a moment too soon. The door at the head of the stairs was wrenched ajar, and a man at the top threw the beam of a powerful flashlight into the cellar.
“X” felt around. He was in a sort of large bin. In one corner was a pile of old clothing. “X” started to pull the clothing away. If his calculations were right, there should be a door to the garage right here. The garage backed up against the cellar, and when he had got out of the coffin, he had noticed a door in the concrete wall.
“X” found the door; it was locked, but he also found something else. The floor under his feet at this point gave out a hollow sound as he trod on it. He stooped to examine it in the dark, while excited voices, hurrying feet, passed the door of the bin.
“X” ran his hands along the floor, and encountered a steel ring set into a square of metal about three feet by three. He pulled at this ring, and the metal square lifted at one end, rose on hinges. It was a trapdoor, and seemed to have been in use, for the hinges were well-oiled, silent.
“X” thrust his foot into the hole that yawned beneath him, and it encountered a wooden step. Quickly, he went down the steps — there were four of them — and lowered the trapdoor after him.
THE darkness here was more intense than it had been in the bin. There was a musty odor about the place, a feeling of dampness.
He waited silently, while the search was being conducted overhead. He ventured to flash his torch around, and found that he was at the beginning of a tunnel that led due east under the garage. The thin beam of light traveled for a distance down the underground passage, and dissolved into the darkness. If the tunnel continued in the same direction, he judged, it should lead to the mausoleum. If it did, that would explain many of the curious things that had happened in the house that night.
He heard voices close above him. There was Denvers, Judge Farrell, and Thane. Then the sound of Betty Dale’s voice. Good girl. She had come along with them on the chance that if he was cornered again, she might create another diversion to help him escape. Apparently they had not suspected her of turning off the lights before — had probably thought that it was done from the balcony.
He heard Thane say, “What’s this, a bin?”
And Judge Farrell’s voice: “Yes. This is where I was held. But there’s nobody here now. Where could he have got to?”
Denvers said, “You want to be more careful, judge. Don’t go poking around in the dark. From what’s been happening here it seems that you’re on somebody’s list to get the works.”
The footsteps receded. They were leaving the bin.
“X” put his hand up to the trapdoor. If he could get up into that bin now, he might be able to work his way back into the house; perhaps take a look at Hanscom’s body. There might be a clue—
He stopped, rigid. His hand had touched something cold — something that was moving across the under surface of the trapdoor. It was a steel plate, sliding across it. Even as he felt it, it slid all the way across, with a little click.
He snapped on his flashlight. There was a steel door clear across the trapdoor. It fitted snugly into a groove in the wall at either end. Somebody must have pressed a button up in the bin, causing it to move into place. Somebody up there—somebody who knew he was in the tunnel—had deliberately shut him in; trapped him — unless he could get out at the other end.
Chapter XXI
WITH a philosophical calm that another man would have been far from feeling, Secret Agent “X” turned away from the curtain of steel that blocked him off from entrance to the house.
He swung his flashlight along the tunnel, and set out to follow its beam. Perhaps he could get out at the other end. If it led to the mausoleum, it would serve to show him how the murderer of the Princes Ar-Lassi had disappeared. He intended, also, to inspect the other coffins in the crypt. For he remembered that the princess had referred to a missing body when she spoke to Rice and Thane and Hanscom and Gates.
The flashlight started to cast a pale yellow glow. It was weakening rapidly. “X” had progressed about a hundred feet along the tunnel. It was wet underfoot; water was seeping in from somewhere. Little things scurried away from him at his approach. One or two brushed his legs. Rats.